The Storehouse Consciousness Across Five Teachings
Differences in What Is Taught, I — The Consciousness Relied Upon所詮差別・心識差別
Gate Nine is the longest of Fazang's ten gates, and this part opens it. Before touching a single doctrine, Fazang first lists ten sub-topics on which the Five Teachings disagree — everything from consciousness to the very number and combination of a buddha's bodies. Then he takes up the first of the ten: what is the ālayavijñāna, the storehouse consciousness, and how much of it does each teaching actually see? The answer turns out to hinge on a single word, 凝然, "fixed" — whether suchness itself can be said to move.
1. Ten Gates in What the Teachings Set Forth
Gate Eight showed ten marks by which the One Vehicle's circumstances — its time, place, host, and the rest — differ from the three vehicles'. Gate Nine turns from circumstance to content: not how the One Vehicle was taught, but what is actually said once the Five Teachings each open their mouths. Fazang announces ten sub-topics before he treats any of them, so that the reader knows from the outset how much ground gate nine alone will cover — parts 9 through 23 of this collection.
第九明諸教所詮差別者。略舉十門。義差別故。顯彼能詮差別非一。餘如別說。一所依心識。二明佛種性。三行位分齊。四修行時分。五修行依身。六斷惑分齊。七二乘迴心。八佛果義相。九攝化境界。十佛身開合。
Ninth, clarifying the differences in what the various teachings set forth: ten gates are listed here in brief. Because the meanings differ, what expresses them is shown to be likewise not single. The rest is as explained separately. First, the consciousness relied upon. Second, clarifying the buddha-lineage. Third, the boundaries of stages and positions. Fourth, the time practice takes. Fifth, the body practice depends on. Sixth, the boundaries of eliminating affliction. Seventh, the two vehicles turning their minds toward the Mahāyāna. Ninth, the domain of a buddha's teaching-transformation. Tenth, the opening and combining of the buddha-bodies.
Fazang's numbering skips straight from seven to nine in the sentence itself — "eighth" never appears as a word, though the eighth item, the meaning and marks of buddha-fruition, is plainly in the list between the seventh and ninth. This looks like a simple scribal slip in transmission rather than any doctrinal point, and we have kept the Chinese exactly as it stands while supplying "eighth" in the translation so the list reads as the ten items Fazang goes on to treat one by one.
It is worth holding this list in mind for the next eight parts of this collection, since Fazang will not repeat it. Consciousness, lineage, stages, the time practice takes, and the body that practices — the five sub-topics covered in Parts 9 through 16 — form a natural group: they ask what a practitioner is, across the path, before Gate Nine turns in Parts 17 onward to what a practitioner does with affliction, conversion, and buddhahood itself.
2. The Hīnayāna: A Name Without a Content
Fazang's method for each of the ten sub-topics is the same: run through Hīnayāna, Initial, Final, Sudden, and Perfect Teaching in order, asking each time how much of the topic that teaching actually reaches. For consciousness, the Hīnayāna barely reaches it at all.
第一心識差別者。如小乘但有六識。義分心意識。如小乘論說。於阿賴耶識但得其名。如增一經說。若依始教。
On the first, the differences in consciousness: in the Hīnayāna there are only the six consciousnesses, though in meaning these are divided into mind, mentation, and consciousness 心・意・識, as the Hīnayāna treatises explain. As for the ālayavijñāna, only its name is obtained there, as the Ekottarika Āgama states. Now, according to the Initial Teaching:
"Only the name is obtained" is a formula Fazang will use again and again in this gate, and it deserves to be understood precisely from its first appearance. He does not mean the Hīnayāna canon is silent about a storehouse consciousness. The Ekottarika Āgama does use the word ālaya — but only in the ordinary sense of "attachment" or "clinging to a home," never as the technical eighth consciousness Yogācāra and Huayan will build an entire psychology around. So the term exists in the earlier literature; what does not yet exist is the content later teachings pour into it. Watch for this same shape — a word present, a doctrine absent — reappearing under lineage, stages, and elsewhere across this gate.
3. The Initial Teaching: Fixed Suchness, a Consciousness That Merely Arises and Ceases
The Initial Teaching — Yogācāra, in Fazang's classification — is the first to name the ālayavijñāna as a real eighth consciousness. But Fazang insists it captures only half of what the storehouse consciousness really is: the arising-and-ceasing half, not the half that is suchness itself.
於阿賴耶識。但得一分生滅之義。以於真理未能融通。但說凝然不作諸法。故就緣起生滅事中建立賴耶。從業等種辨體而生。異熟報識為諸法依。方便漸漸引向真理。故說熏等悉皆即空。如解深密經云。若菩薩於內於外不見藏住。不見熏習。不見阿賴耶。不見阿賴耶識。不見阿陀那。不見阿陀那識。若能如是知者是名菩薩菩薩。
...only one portion of the meaning of arising-and-ceasing is obtained with regard to the ālayavijñāna, since this teaching has not yet been able to fuse true principle and phenomena into one. It speaks only of a fixed suchness that does not itself produce the various dharmas, and so it establishes the ālaya within the phenomenal matter of dependently-arisen arising-and-ceasing, distinguishing its essence as generated from the seeds of karmic action and the rest — the ripening consciousness that serves as the basis for all dharmas. By skillful means it draws the practitioner little by little toward true principle, and so it teaches that the perfuming and all the rest are, in the final analysis, empty. As the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra says: "If a bodhisattva, within and without, does not see an abiding storehouse, does not see the perfuming, does not see the ālaya, does not see the ālayavijñāna, does not see the ādāna, does not see the ādāna-consciousness — if he is able to know in this way, he is called a bodhisattva."
如來齊此建立一切心意識祕密善巧。瑜伽中亦同此說。解云。既齊此不見等處。立為心意等善巧故。是故所立賴耶生滅等相皆是密意。不令如言而取故。會歸真也。
Up to this very point the Tathāgata establishes all his secret and skillful teaching concerning mind, mentation, and consciousness. The Yogācārabhūmi says the same. Explanation: precisely because it is only up to the point of "not seeing" the storehouse and the rest that mind, mentation, and consciousness are established as skillful means, the marks of arising and ceasing set up for the ālaya are all of hidden intent — not meant to be taken literally at their word, but meant to be gathered back into what is truly so.
The Chinese repeats 菩薩, "bodhisattva," at the very end of the quoted sūtra passage — 是名菩薩菩薩. This reads as an accidental doubling in the source rather than a deliberate emphasis, and we have translated it once, as the sense plainly requires, while keeping the Chinese exactly as transmitted.
The technical term to hold onto here is 密意, "hidden intent" — a standard Yogācāra device for scriptures that say something provisional in order to lead the listener somewhere else. Fazang's point is sharp: the Initial Teaching's entire account of the ālayavijñāna as an arising-and-ceasing "ripening consciousness," generated from karmic seeds, is itself an instance of hidden intent. It is not the last word even within the sūtra it claims to found itself on — the Saṃdhinirmocana already tells the advanced bodhisattva not to see any of it, ālaya included. This is the seam Fazang will use, throughout Gate Nine, to argue that the Initial Teaching is a way-station rather than a destination: its own scriptures already point past it.
4. The Final Teaching: Suchness and Arising-and-Ceasing, Neither One nor Different
Where the Initial Teaching keeps suchness "fixed" and lets only phenomena arise and cease, the Final Teaching — the tathāgatagarbha tradition of the Laṅkāvatāra and the Awakening of Faith — allows suchness itself to combine with arising-and-ceasing. This is the "two-portion" reading of the ālayavijñāna that this site's Awakening of Faith translation covers in detail.
若依終教。於此賴耶識。得理事融通二分義。故論但云不生不滅與生滅和合非一非異。名阿梨耶識。以許真如隨熏和合成此本識。不同前教業等種生故。楞伽云。
According to the Final Teaching, with regard to this ālayavijñāna, the twofold meaning of principle and phenomena fused together is obtained. Hence a treatise says only that what is neither arisen nor ceasing, combined with what arises and ceases, is neither one nor different — and this is named the ālayavijñāna 阿梨耶識. For this teaching grants that suchness, following the perfuming, combines to form this root consciousness — unlike the preceding teaching, in which it is generated only from the seeds of karmic action and the rest. The Laṅkāvatāra says:
如來藏為無始惡習所熏名為藏識。又云。如來藏受苦樂。與因俱若生若滅。又云。如來藏名阿賴耶識。而與無明七識俱。又起信云。
"The tathāgatagarbha, perfumed by beginningless evil habits, is named the storehouse consciousness." And again: "The tathāgatagarbha undergoes suffering and pleasure, and together with its causes, either arises or ceases." And again: "The tathāgatagarbha is named the ālayavijñāna, and it exists together with the seven consciousnesses that belong to ignorance." And the Awakening of Faith says:
自性清淨心。因無明風動成染心等。如是非一。問真如既言常法。
"The mind that is by nature pure, moved by the wind of ignorance, becomes a defiled mind" — statements of this kind occur in more than one place. Question: since suchness is said to be a permanent dharma,
The treatise Fazang quotes without naming — "a treatise says only that what is neither arisen nor ceasing..." — is the Awakening of Faith itself, whose most quoted line is exactly this: 不生不滅與生滅和合，非一非異，名阿梨耶識. Fazang is reading that line as the Final Teaching's technical improvement on the Initial Teaching's ālaya — not a different consciousness, but the same word doing more work, because suchness is now allowed inside it rather than kept fixed above it. The Laṅkāvatāra citations that follow make the same point three ways: the tathāgatagarbha does not merely underlie the storehouse consciousness, it is named the storehouse consciousness, and it genuinely arises and ceases together with its conditions.
5. A Permanence That Is Not Fixed
The obvious objection follows at once: if suchness is permanent, how can it arise and cease? Fazang's answer redefines "permanent" itself, and reaches for the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra's paradox of the defiled-undefiled mind to do it.
云何得說隨熏起滅。既許起滅。如何復說為凝然常。答既言真如常故。非如言所謂常也。何者聖說真如為凝然者。此是隨緣作諸法時。不失自體。故說為常。是即不異無常之常名不思議常。非謂不作諸法如情所謂之凝然也。故勝鬘中云。不染而染者。明隨緣作諸法也。染而不染者。明隨緣時不失自性。由初義故俗諦得成。由後義故真諦復立。如是真俗但有二義無有二體。相融無礙離諸情執。
...how can it be said to arise and cease, following the perfuming? And having granted that it arises and ceases, how can it again be called fixed and permanent? Answer: precisely because suchness is called permanent, it is not permanent in the sense ordinarily meant by that word. Why is this? When the sages speak of suchness as "fixed," this refers to the fact that, even while following conditions to produce all dharmas, it does not lose its own essence — and for that reason it is called permanent. This permanence, then, is no different from impermanence, and is called the inconceivable permanence; it does not mean that suchness fails to produce the various dharmas, in the sense of "fixed" that ordinary feeling supposes. Hence the Śrīmālā says: "that it is undefiled, and yet is defiled" shows that, following conditions, it produces the various dharmas; "that it is defiled, and yet is undefiled" shows that, while following conditions, it does not lose its own nature. By the first meaning the conventional truth is established; by the second, the ultimate truth is again established. Thus the ultimate and the conventional have only two meanings and not two essences — they fuse together without obstruction, free of every clinging of ordinary feeling.
"Not undefiled, yet defiled; defiled, yet not undefiled" is the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra's own formula for the mind that is by nature pure yet stained by adventitious afflictions — this site's Śrīmālā translation covers the passage Fazang has in mind. Fazang's use of it here is precise: he is not saying suchness sometimes changes and sometimes does not. He is redefining what "permanent" ever meant for the sages who used the word — not "static," but "never losing its own essence no matter what it produces." An inconceivable permanence, coextensive with impermanence rather than opposed to it. This is the hinge on which the entire Final Teaching turns, and it is why the Final Teaching's ālayavijñāna can do something the Initial Teaching's cannot: actually explain how a defiled mind could ever become a buddha's, since the purity was never somewhere else to begin with.
6. One Root Verse, Two Readings
Fazang closes his comparison of the Initial and Final Teachings with a single classic verse — cited by the Mahāyānasaṃgraha one way and the Ratnagotravibhāga another — to show, in miniature, exactly how the same scriptural word can be read through either teaching.
是故論云。智障極盲闇謂真俗別執。此之謂也。此真如二義。同前始教中約法相差別門故。但說一分凝然義也。此終教中。約體相鎔融門故。說二分無二之義。此義廣如起信義記中說。又如十地經云。三界虛妄唯一心作。攝論等約始教義釋。諸賴耶識等也。十地論約終教釋。為第一義真心也。又如達磨經頌攝論等釋云。此界等者。界謂因義。即種子識。如是等。寶性論約終教釋云。此性者即如來藏性。依此有諸趣等者。如勝鬘經說。依如來藏有生死。依如來藏有涅槃等。乃至廣說。是故當知二門別也。
Hence a treatise says: "The obstruction to what can be known is the very darkness of blindness that holds the ultimate and the conventional to be fixed and separate" — this is what is meant. These two meanings of suchness: in the Initial Teaching discussed above, since suchness is approached through the gate of differentiated dharma-characteristics, only the one portion, the meaning of fixity, is stated. In this Final Teaching, since it is approached through the gate in which essence and characteristic are fused, the meaning that the two portions are not two is stated. This meaning is explained at length in the Commentary on the Meaning of the Awakening of Faith. Again, the Daśabhūmika Sūtra says: "The three realms are illusory, made by the one mind alone" — the Mahāyānasaṃgraha and its commentaries interpret this according to the meaning of the Initial Teaching, as referring to the various aspects of the ālayavijñāna; the Daśabhūmika-śāstra interprets it according to the Final Teaching, as the true mind of ultimate meaning. Again, the Abhidharma-sūtra verse, as the Mahāyānasaṃgraha and its commentaries explain it, says: "realm," here, means "cause" — that is, the seed-consciousness, and so on. The Ratnagotravibhāga, interpreting according to the Final Teaching, says: "this nature" is precisely the nature of the tathāgatagarbha, and "dependent on this there are the various destinies" — as the Śrīmālā Sūtra says: "dependent on the tathāgatagarbha there is birth-and-death; dependent on the tathāgatagarbha there is nirvāṇa," and so on at length. One should therefore know that the two approaches are distinct.
The "Abhidharma-sūtra verse" behind this whole paragraph is the famous line quoted throughout Yogācāra literature, "since beginningless time, the realm is the support of all dharmas; because of this there are the various destinies, and the attainment of nirvāṇa too." Fazang shows the same word, 界 ("realm," here glossed as "cause"), read two ways: the Mahāyānasaṃgraha takes it as the seed-consciousness — the Initial Teaching's ālayavijñāna, generating dharmas the way a seed generates a sprout — while the Ratnagotravibhāga takes the identical word as the tathāgatagarbha itself, the Final Teaching's ālayavijñāna, on which saṃsāra and nirvāṇa both depend as their single underlying nature. One citation, two doctrines: this is Fazang's method for the whole of Gate Nine in miniature. He rarely accuses a teaching of misreading scripture; he shows that the scripture supports both readings, and that the more inclusive reading is always the more advanced teaching's.
Note also the careful distinction between the Daśabhūmika Sūtra (十地經, the scripture, part of the Avataṃsaka) and the Daśabhūmika-śāstra (十地論, Vasubandhu's commentary on it, translated in full on this site). Fazang treats the sūtra's line as read one way by the Yogācāra Saṃgraha tradition and another way by Vasubandhu's own treatise on the very sūtra it comments on — a reminder that "the Final Teaching" and "the Initial Teaching" are reading strategies Fazang assigns to different exegetical lineages, not simply different centuries or texts.
7. The Sudden and Perfect Teachings: Past Nonduality, and the Ocean of Nature
The Sudden Teaching has almost nothing left to say about consciousness at all — not because it denies mind, but because it refuses every distinction that a doctrine of consciousness would need. The Perfect Teaching, by contrast, says the most of any teaching: the one mind is now the entire dependent origination of the dharma-realm.
若依頓教。即一切法唯一真如心。差別相盡離言絕慮不可說也。如維摩經中三十二菩薩所說不二法門者。是前終教中染淨鎔融無二之義。淨名所顯離言不二是此門也。以其一切染淨相盡無有二法可以融會故。不可說為不二也。
According to the Sudden Teaching, all dharmas are simply the one mind of suchness. Every differentiated mark is exhausted; it is cut off from words, severed from thought, and cannot be spoken of. As for the gate of nonduality that the thirty-two bodhisattvas expound in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra — that is the meaning, discussed above under the Final Teaching, of defilement and purity fused without duality. But the nonduality beyond words that Vimalakīrti himself reveals is this Sudden gate. For once every mark of defilement and purity is exhausted, there are not even two dharmas left over to be fused into one — and so it cannot even be spoken of as "nondual."
若依圓教。即約性海圓明法界緣起無礙自在一即一切一切即一主伴圓融。故說十心以顯無盡。如離世間品及第九地說。又唯一法界性起心亦具十德。如性起品說。此等據別教言。若約同教。
According to the Perfect Teaching, it is approached from the ocean of the nature, perfectly bright — the unobstructed and self-mastering dependent origination of the dharma-realm, in which one is precisely all and all is precisely one, host and retinue fully interpenetrating. Hence the sūtra speaks of ten minds to reveal what is inexhaustible, as the "Chapter on Detachment from the World" and the Ninth Ground explain. Again, the mind that arises from the nature of the one dharma-realm alone likewise possesses ten virtues, as the "Chapter on the Arising of the Nature" explains. All of this is spoken according to the Separate Teaching. As for the Common Teaching:
即攝前諸教所說心識何以故。是此方便故。從此而流故。餘可準之。
...it takes up and includes everything the preceding teachings say about consciousness. Why is this? Because those teachings are its own skillful means, and because they flow forth from it. The rest may be understood on this model.
Two Avataṃsaka passages anchor the Perfect Teaching's account: the "ten minds" of the "Chapter on Detachment from the World" (part of the same Gaṇḍavyūha section this site has translated in full) and the "Chapter on the Arising of the Tathāgata's Nature," which describes a single mind possessing ten virtues simply by arising from the dharma-realm's own nature. Notice the shift in what "one mind" even means by this point in the gate: for the Hīnayāna it barely named an eighth consciousness at all; for the Perfect Teaching it has become coextensive with the dependent origination of the entire dharma-realm — host and retinue, one and all, fully interpenetrating without obstruction. Later parts of this collection (from Part 28 onward, on the Ten Mysterious Gates) will unfold exactly what "host and retinue" and "one is precisely all" mean in full; here they appear for the first time, attached specifically to the storehouse consciousness.
8. One Mind, Five Gates
Fazang closes the sub-topic with a question any careful reader would ask: if it is really "one mind" throughout, how can five teachings say such different things about it? His answer introduces a fivefold analytic device — comprehension by the dharma itself, and by the capacity of whoever is being taught — that will recur later in this gate, notably in Part 12's closing summary of the whole lineage sub-topic.
問云何一心約就諸教。得有如是差別義耶。答此有二義。一約法通收。二約機分齊。初義者。由此甚深緣起一心具五義門。是故聖者隨以一門攝化眾生。一攝義從名門。如小乘教說。二攝理從事門。如始教說。三理事無礙門。如終教說。四事盡理顯門。如頓教說。五性海具德門。如圓教說。是即不動本而常末。不壞末而恒本。故五義相融唯一心轉也。
Question: how can the one mind, considered across the various teachings, come to bear such differing meanings? Answer: there are two meanings here. One is comprehension in terms of the dharma itself; the other is the boundary set by the capacity of those being taught. As to the first meaning: because this profoundly dependently-arisen one mind possesses five gates of meaning, the sages accordingly take up first one gate and then another to gather in and transform sentient beings. First, the gate of gathering meaning under name, as the Hīnayāna teaching states it. Second, the gate of gathering principle under phenomena, as the Initial Teaching states it. Third, the gate of the unobstructed interpenetration of principle and phenomena, as the Final Teaching states it. Fourth, the gate in which phenomena are exhausted and principle alone is manifest, as the Sudden Teaching states it. Fifth, the gate of the ocean of the nature replete with virtues, as the Perfect Teaching states it. This is precisely: without stirring from the root, ever remaining the branch; without destroying the branch, ever remaining the root. Hence the five meanings fuse together, and turn as the one mind alone.
二約機明得法分齊者。或有得名而不得義。如小乘教。或有得名得一分義。如始教。或有得名得具分義。如終教。或有得義而不存名。如頓教。或有名義俱無盡。如圓教。其餘義門如唯識章說。
As to the second meaning, clarifying the boundary of what is attained according to the capacity of those being taught: some obtain the name but not the meaning — as in the Hīnayāna teaching. Some obtain the name and one portion of the meaning — as in the Initial Teaching. Some obtain the name and the meaning in full — as in the Final Teaching. Some obtain the meaning but retain no name — as in the Sudden Teaching. Some have both name and meaning inexhaustible — as in the Perfect Teaching. The remaining gates of meaning are as explained in the Chapter on Consciousness-Only.
This closing move is one of Fazang's characteristic devices, and it is worth naming clearly because it will return: rather than treating the Five Teachings as five separate and competing doctrines, he treats them as five gates onto a single dependently-arisen reality — "without stirring from the root, ever remaining the branch." No teaching is simply wrong; each holds one gate open, calibrated to what a given audience is capable of receiving, while the deeper reality being taught never actually changes across them. The second, "name versus meaning" framework sharpens this into a scale of five degrees of comprehension, from bare vocabulary (Hīnayāna) to a fullness in which name and meaning are both inexhaustible (Perfect Teaching). Watch for this exact same analytic — one topic, five gates, ranked by how much of the dharma versus the mere name each teaching secures — to reappear as Fazang closes the lineage sub-topic in Part 12.
The "Chapter on Consciousness-Only" that Fazang points to for further detail cannot be identified with certainty; it is most likely a cross-reference to another section of his own broader exegetical corpus rather than to Xuanzang and Kuiji's Cheng Weishi Lun, which this site has also translated, though the two should not be confused.
Part Nine Complete
This closes Part Nine: the ten sub-topics of Gate Nine listed in full, and the first of them worked through five times over — the Hīnayāna's bare name, the Initial Teaching's fixed suchness and merely arising-and-ceasing ālaya, the Final Teaching's suchness genuinely combined with arising-and-ceasing, the Sudden Teaching's refusal of even nonduality, and the Perfect Teaching's one mind coextensive with the dependent origination of the whole dharma-realm — closed by the fivefold gate that explains how one mind can bear five such different accounts at once.
Part Ten turns to the second sub-topic: not what consciousness is, but who is capable of becoming a buddha at all. The Hīnayāna's six lineages come first, including the peculiar case of a lineage called "unmoving" that nonetheless has three internal grades — one of which is reserved for a single named disciple.