2024 ANGO

THE THIRTY VERSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS ONLY | VASUBANDHU

Translated by Ben Connelly and Weijen Teng

1.        SELF AND OTHER

Everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness.

Whatever arises in experience is your own mind.

Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations.

Know that and don’t generate self-other fixations–

This is the practice of bodhisattva.

2.        THE EIGHT-CONSCIOUSNESSES MODEL

This transformation has three aspects:

• the ripening of karma

• the consciousness of a self

• the imagery of sense objects.

8. Alaya

7. Manas

6. Mind/thought

5 Sight

4 Sound

3, Smell

                  2 Taste

                  1 Touch

3.        STORE CONSCIOUSNESS

The first of these is also called alaya, the store consciousness, which contains all karmic seeds.

What it holds and its perception of location are unknown.

4.        ASPECTS OF THE BUDDHIST UNCONSCIOUS

It is always associated with sense-contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition.

Neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It is unobstructed and karmically neutral.

Like a river flowing. In enlightenment it is overturned at its root.

The storehouse consciousness is very profound and subtle;

All its seeds are like a torrential flow.

I do not explain it to the ignorant.

For fear they will cling to it and consider it a self.

5.        MIND MAKES SELF AND OTHER

Dependent on the store consciousness and taking it as its object, Manas, the consciousness of a self arises, which consists of thinking.

6.        STUCK ON THE SELF

It is always associated with four afflictions

                  • self view

                  • self delusion

                  • self pride

                  • self-love

And is obstructed but karmically neutral. Along with these four.

7.        SEEING THROUGH I, ME, AND MINE

From where it is born come:

                  • sense-contact

                  • attention

                  • sensation

                  • perception

                  • volition

It is not found in enlightenment, the meditation of cessation or the supramundane path.

8.        THE ALL

This is the second transformation, the third is the perception of the six-senses,

Which are beneficial, harmful, or neither.

9.        MINDFULNESS OF PHENOMENA

It is associated with three kinds of mental factors:

                  • universal

                  • specific

                  • beneficial

As well as the afflictions and secondary afflictions, and the three sensations.

10.  FIVE AGGREGATES, FIVE UNIVERSAL FACTORS

The universal factors are:

                  • sense-contact

                  • attention

                  • sensation

                  • perception

                  • volition

The specific are:

• aspiration

• resolve

• memory

• concentration

• intellection

11.  CULTIVATING SEEDS OF GOODNESS

The beneficial factors are:

                  • faith

                  • conscience

                  • humility

                  • lack of desire, aversion, and delusion

• Energy

• Tranquility

• Carefulness

• Equanimity

• Nonviolence

12.  BEING WITH SUFFERING

The afflictions are:

                  • desire

                  • aversion

                  • pride

                  • wrong view

                  • doubt

The secondary afflictions are:

                  • anger

                  • hatred

                  • hypocrisy

                  • malice

                  • envy

                  • selfishness

13.  TAKING CARE OF SUFFERING

Deceitfulness, guile, arrogance, lack of conscience, and humility, sluggishness.

Restlessness, lack of faith, laziness, carelessness, forgetfulness, distraction, unawareness.

I am sure to become old; I cannot avoid aging.

I am sure to become ill; I cannot avoid illness.

I am sure to die; I cannot avoid death.

I will be parted from all that is dear and beloved to me.

Actions are my possessions, actions are my protection, actions are the womb  from which I have sprung. I am heir to my actions; as I do so shall I become.

14.  NOT ALWAYS SO

Remorse, sleepiness, initial thought, and analysis can be either afflictive or not.

15.  THE WATER AND THE WAVES

The five-sense consciousnesses arise on the root conscioiusness together or separately.

Depending on conditions, like waves arise on water.

16.  ON THINKING

Thought consciousness always manifests except in the realm of no-thought.

The two thought-free meditation states:

• unconsciousness

• thought-free sleep

17.  PROJECTION ONLY

This transformation of consciousness is conceptualition.

What is conceptualized does not exist. Thus everything is projection-only.

18.  THE PROCESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness is all the seeds transforming in various ways.

Through mutual influence producing the many conceptualizations.

19.  THE RIPENING OF KARMA

Karmic impressions and the impressions of grasping self and other

Produce further ripening as the former karmic is exhausted.

20.  THREE NATURES

Whatever thing is conceptualized by whatever conceptualization

Is of an imaginary nature; it does not exist.

21.  DEPENDENCE AND REALIZATION

The other-dependent nature is conceptualization arising from conditions;

The complete, realized nature is the other-dependent nature’s always being devoid of the imaginary.

22.  THE HARMONY OF DIFFERENCE AND SAMENESS

Thus it is neither the same nor different from the other-dependent,

Like impermanence, etc. . . when one isn’t seen

The other also is not seen.

23.  NO OWN NATURE

With the threefold nature is a. threefold absence of self-nature.

So it has been taught that all things have no self.

Sit erect with an even temper. Attention should be neither focused on the breath, nor on any form of color, nor on empty space, earth, water, fire, wind, nor even on what has been seen, heard, remembered, or conceived.

24.  THREE NATURES, ALL WITHOUT SELF

The imaginary is without self by definition.

The other dependent does not exist by itself.

The third is no-self nature–that is.

25.  FOUR WAYS TO EXPRESS THE INEXPRESSIBLE

The complete, realized nature of all phenomena, which is thusness–

Since it is always, already thus, projection-only.

26.  HOW WE ARE BOUND

As long as consciousness does not rest in projection-only,

The tendencies of grasping self and other will not cease.

From Nirvana Sutra, Buddha teachers that nirvana is:

“the peaceful, the deathless, the sublime, the secure, the destruction of craving, the wonderful, the unailing, the unafflicted, dispassion, freedom, nonattachment, the shelter, the refuge, the destination, and the path leading to the destination.

27.  THINKING ABOUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH

By conceiving what you put before you to be projection-only,

You do not rest in just this.

28.  BEING AT REST

When consciousness does not perceive any object, then it rests in projection-only.

When there is nothing to grasp, there is no grasping.

29.  TRANSFORMATION AT THE ROOT OF SUFFERING

Without thought, without conception, this is the supramundane awareness:

The overturning of the root, the end of the two barriers.

30.  THE BLISSFUL BODY OF LIBERATION

It is the inconceivable, wholesome, unstained, constant realm,

The blissful body of liberation, the Dharma body of the great sage,