Vijnaptimatrata Siddhi: You think you are seeing the world,
but actually, eight consciousnesses are conspiring.
Please try something simple right now.
Look up
and glance at anything in front of you.
A cup,
a phone,
or a window.
Just a single glance,
less than a second,
and you probably feel
it is a complete, single action.
'I'
'see'
'that'
'thing.'
Seamless
and natural.
But the Vijnaptimatrata Siddhi tells you
that for that single glance,
at least eight programs started and collaborated simultaneously
to construct the image you take for granted.
The most unsettling part is:
even if you search these eight programs inside and out,
you cannot find the 'self' that gives the orders.
Hello,
everyone.
I am Wang Lijie.
In this series deconstructing Buddhist classics with modern language,
we have gone from the Agamas to Prajna,
to Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka.
Today, we finally reach the toughest
and most fascinating book of Yogacara: Vijnaptimatrata Siddhi.
This book wasn't written by just one person.
It is Xuanzang's compilation of ten masters' commentaries
on Vasubandhu's 'Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only.'
Xuanzang synthesized them into one work.
As for why Xuanzang went to India,
and what happened at Nalanda Monastery,
I have covered that in my historical context series.
I won't repeat it here.
Today, we will do only one thing:
dive straight into the main text
to see how the eight consciousnesses actually operate.
But before we dive in,
I need to be completely honest with you.
In the last episode on Yogacara,
a friend left a comment that I still remember.
He said,
'Wang Lijie, you are a bit contradictory.'
'On one hand, you say events are real,
while stories are filled in by the brain.'
'On the other, you've built an elaborate story of terms:'
'Alaya is the hardware,'
'the Three Natures are the software logic,'
'Samatha-vipasyana is the patch,'
'and the Thirty Verses are the constitution.'
'The audience faints from your complex architecture'
'before they even see the actual truth.'
He used a very sharp phrase:
'Stopping small biases'
'but allowing a massive construct.'
This really hit home.
I admit he's right.
So today, let me clarify first:
The system of the eight consciousnesses
is itself just a finger pointing at the moon,
a raft to cross a river.
I am explaining it
not so you can worship or recite these eight terms,
but to use it to help you
see something you have ignored your whole life.
The 'self' you think is stable and present all day
is actually assembled temporarily,
moment by moment.
Once you realize this,
you can discard this entire framework.
If the Dharma itself should be abandoned,
how much more so these eight terms?
Alright.
Let's return to that single glance.
In that fraction of a second you see the cup,
what exactly is happening?
The first level
is the first five consciousnesses:
eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body.
These correspond to the five senses.
Think of them as five sensors,
or five cameras.
Their job is extremely pure:
they only receive raw signals.
What the eye consciousness receives
isn't actually a "cup,"
but a collection of colors, light, and edges.
It doesn't recognize the cup.
It doesn't make evaluations.
It doesn't even know what it is seeing.
It's like a camera's image sensor—
click!
it turns light into data.
That's all.
Note that
at this stage,
the "cup" doesn't exist in your world yet,
only a pile of untranslated raw signals.
Let me give you an example you can experience instantly.
Listen to a foreign language you don't understand at all,
like an Arabic radio broadcast.
The sound waves
received by your ear consciousness
are exactly the same
as those received by an Arab—
down to the last detail.
But to you,
it's just a bunch of meaningless noise.
To them,
it's a perfectly clear sentence.
The difference isn't in the ears,
nor in the first five consciousnesses.
The difference is
their "hard drive" stores the seeds of that language,
while yours doesn't.
The same raw signal
enters different systems
and is translated into completely different things.
You never hear the sound itself;
you hear sound processed by your system.
What translates these signals into "a cup,"
and those sound waves into "a sentence,"
is the sixth consciousness,
what we usually call the conscious mind.
I want to correct a popular metaphor here.
A tech viewer reminded me of this recently.
Many say the eighth consciousness, Alaya, is the "OS."
In computer logic, that's not quite right.
The one that acts like the OS, the render engine, and the CPU
is actually the sixth consciousness.
It takes the raw signals from the previous five,
instantly recalls memories,
and labels it: "This is a cup."
"This is my cup."
"This is the cup my friend gave me yesterday."
Then it judges: "It's pretty."
"It's ugly."
"It's clean."
"It needs a wash."
Then it decides:
Should I reach out and grab it?
Buddhism has a phrase for the sixth consciousness's weight:
"In moving the body or speaking words, it is supreme."
Whatever action your body takes,
whatever words your mouth speaks,
the final command
is always issued by the sixth consciousness.
The first five only handle perception;
they do not create karma.
But when the sixth mind thinks or speaks,
karma is created.
At this point,
the picture is already quite complete.
A sensor array.
A powerful processor and rendering engine.
It sounds like...
A good camera and a strong computer...
Could handle it all.
Then why does Buddhism describe two more consciousnesses?
Because two crucial elements are still missing.
One is the sense of "self."
The other is the memory of it all.
Let's talk about the sense of "self" first.
This is the seventh consciousness,
the Manas consciousness.
It's the quietest and most stubborn part of the system.
It doesn't process the outside world.
It doesn't distinguish if a cup is red or blue.
From the moment you were born until now,
at every single moment,
it's doing the same thing in the background.
It fixates on the eighth consciousness, that storehouse,
and misinterprets that storehouse as "me."
Buddhism describes its operation in four words:
"Constant, discerning, pondering, and weighing."
"Constant" means it never stops.
Even when you're asleep, it's still on duty.
"Discerning" is repeated scrutiny and confirmation.
The object it "ponders and weighs"
is always just one thing:
that "self."
You can understand it like this:
The sixth consciousness is the busy, flickering front desk,
thinking of one thing then another.
But Manas is a background process that never exits.
It runs only one line of code,
and it runs day and night: "This is me.
This is mine.
This is me."
The reason you feel you are the same person today as yesterday,
the reason you feel there's a continuous,
single, stable "me" experiencing all this,
is because of this background process tirelessly stitching it together.
It's the thread that sews all the fragments into a "self."
Normally, you don't feel
this Manas consciousness.
But in one particular moment,
it suddenly reveals itself.
It's when someone makes a casual comment about you,
perhaps just an offhand joke,
but you feel like you've been stabbed.
Your anger flares up instantly.
We've discussed this before:
Why do you hear a casual remark
as if it were a knife?
Now you have a deeper answer.
That knife
isn't cutting your ears;
it's cutting the "self" that Manas clings to so tightly.
Any slight touch to the "self"
causes Manas to immediately sound the alarm
and mobilize its entire defense.
You think it's you who is angry,
but it's actually that "clung-to self"
feeling threatened.
If one day, in that half-second before the anger rises,
you can see: "Oh,
that's Manas taking this as 'me' again."
That half-second
is where true practice happens.
The final layer:
The eighth consciousness,
the Alaya consciousness.
I said before it's not the operating system.
So what is it?
It's like a hard drive that's never powered down or turned off.
All your life's experiences, emotions, thoughts, hurts, and loves
are silently stored on this hard drive
in the form of "seeds."
It doesn't show up in the foreground.
You can't feel it running,
but it never stops.
It turns those seeds into your current reality.
Your current mood, habits, and preferences
are all seeds sprouting.
Meanwhile, it takes every thought and action of yours
and perfumes them into new seeds,
storing them back in.
Seeds manifest into action,
and actions perfume the seeds.
This hard drive
is the underlying database of your entire life.
This cycle of "seeds to action and action to seeds"
sounds abstract,
but you actually operate it yourself every day.
You pick up your phone
and watch a short video.
This is a manifest action.
This movement
quietly perfumes a seed into the hard drive.
Tomorrow, when that same boredom arises,
this seed sprouts,
pushing your hand toward the phone again.
This is another manifest action,
perfuming an even thicker seed.
After a week,
you have watered this neural pathway wide and deep.
Thus, you have a habit of "uncontrollable scrolling."
Buddhism doesn't call it a habit;
Buddhism says
you've been watering that seed in the Alaya-vijnana
for an entire week.
The reason you are who you are today
isn't destiny;
it was perfumed, drop by drop,
by countless past actions.
It sounds a bit scary,
but look at it from another perspective:
this is where hope lies. Since it was perfumed,
it can be re-perfumed.
Alright.
Now all eight programs have appeared.
The first five consciousnesses receive;
the sixth translates and makes decisions;
the seventh clings to a "self" in the background;
the eighth stores everything at the base layer.
Let's replay that look at the cup
in slow motion.
Then you'll see how it "works."
Light enters the eyes;
the first five consciousnesses turn it into raw data.
In a few hundredths of a second,
the sixth consciousness takes over,
retrieving the concept of "cup" from the hard drive,
naming it, judging it, and recalling a friend's face.
A few tenths of a second.
Meanwhile,
the eighth consciousness hard drive is supplying the goods.
Without the seeds it stores,
the sixth consciousness couldn't recognize the cup at all.
And throughout the entire process,
the Manas-vijnana remains at the bottom, silent,
packaging this string of computations
into "I see a cup."
The eight consciousnesses
don't line up one by one;
they operate simultaneously in overlapping layers.
How fast is it?
So fast you don't perceive any stitching.
You only feel a seamless, natural "I see it."
The most brilliant thing about this machine
is that it hides itself so well
that you think there is no machine,
only a naked, direct "self."
Now, please stop
and ask one question:
out of these eight programs,
who is the boss?
Who is directing them?
Who is sitting in the center chair,
watching all of this,
giving the final word, "Okay,
I've decided"?
Your subconscious might think,
Of course there is someone.
That boss is "me."
My eyes are watching,
My brain is thinking,
I am making the decisions.
It feels like there's a tiny version of me in my head,
Sitting in a small theater,
In front of a screen,
Aggregating all the visuals and sounds from the eyes and ears.
And this little self watches while directing everything.
This scenario,
Was given a very precise name by the philosopher Dennett:
The "Cartesian Theater."
What’s interesting is,
This isn't just one person's illusion.
A psychological study of over 2,000 people tested this;
The vast majority intuitively believe
Consciousness happens in one concentrated, specific spot in the brain,
As if there really is a screen and an audience seat there.
However,
Neuroscientists have turned the brain inside out
And found no such screen,
Nor any such audience.
No single brain region acts as that "headquarters."
The model Dennett proposed is called "Multiple Drafts."
Countless parallel streams of information run simultaneously,
Conflicting and being constantly rewritten.
There is no central theater
Where they are finally gathered and played.
Have you noticed?
This is exactly what the *Cheng Weishi Lun* described 1,000 years ago.
The Eight Consciousnesses,
Each doing their own thing,
Running in parallel,
With no supreme commander overhead.
The so-called "self"
Is not the "operator" of this machine;
The "self" is just a result of the machine running.
Furthermore,
Something today
Demonstrates this more clearly than ever before:
Large Language Models.
When you chat with an AI,
It answers fluently,
Making you almost feel there is an "it" sitting there,
A being with its own thoughts.
But if you dig into those hundreds of billions of parameters,
You won't find that "it" living anywhere.
No single parameter is its "self."
No single layer of the network is its "center."
The so-called answer
Is a result calculated by massive parameters in that instant.
That is all.
A continuous, personality-like "it"
Is an effect produced by the machine,
Not something that actually exists inside it.
You see,
There is no center on the Silicon-based side,
And no center on the Carbon-based side.
Those Indian masters over a thousand years ago,
Relying purely on inward observation,
Wrote down this "lack of a center."
Whenever I reach this point,
It sends a shiver down my spine.
So the question arises:
If there is no commander,
Why do we feel so coherent,
So seamless, and so truly that "there is a me"?
The answer
Is that stubborn Manas-vijnana we just mentioned.
At every moment, it clings in the background,
Taking that distributed, chaotic computational process,
And forcing it into a unified, continuous "self."
This sense of seamlessness
Doesn't exist because there is a real self;
It's because a tireless process is forging that seamlessness.
Neuroscience offers a very similar explanation.
Some scholars believe that
The "sense of self" is essentially a data compression by the brain.
The external world, internal bodily signals, past memories—
the volume of information is too massive to process.
So the brain compresses this chaos into a simple, useful label
called "I."
To help you make quick decisions in a dangerous world,
and stay alive.
Buddhism calls this "attachment to self."
Science calls it "compression."
The terminology is worlds apart,
but the hands are pointing
at the same moon—that "Self"
is a function,
not an entity;
a verb,
not a noun.
Let me add one more stroke
to make this picture more three-dimensional.
The Eight Consciousnesses
are called "Heart Kings" in Yogacara.
They are eight kings.
But every king
is followed by a group of attendants
called "mental factors."
For example, the basic ones: Contact,
when consciousness meets an object;
Attention,
when focus shifts toward it;
Feeling,
the instant of pleasure or discomfort;
Perception,
grasping the image;
Volition,
which drives you to act.
So what you think of as "I had a thought"
is never a lone consciousness moving by itself.
It is a king
leading an entire team of attendants
into action at once.
Even the simplest flicker of a thought
is the collaborative work of a small team.
At this point,
the most crucial sentence
can finally be spoken.
The "I" you have spent your life searching for
is never found within any single consciousness.
It's not in the eyes,
not in the thoughts,
nor in the memories.
It is "between" the operations of the eight consciousnesses.
Like a rainbow,
it does not exist within any single droplet of water,
yet it is indeed
manifested by countless droplets together.
If you reach out to grab the droplet of "I,"
you will always catch nothing.
Yet clearly,
you live within that rainbow every day.
Alright.
By now,
you probably sense
why the Discourse on the Establishment of Consciousness-Only breaks this down so minutely,
almost inhumanly so.
It's not to test if you can memorize eight terms.
It is tackling the oldest and most painful question:
If there is no fixed "self,"
who is the one suffering?
Who is in the cycle of samsara?
And who,
exactly, is sitting here listening to me talk about practice?
Its answer is chillingly calm:
There is no "who."
There is only this system,
moment by moment,
operating on its own.
But notice—
the moment this answer lands,
it immediately triggers an even more vital question.
If "I" am just a result calculated by the eight consciousnesses,
then—can this calculation
be changed?
Can the seeds in your hard drive that shape your destiny and temper
be overwritten?
Can that Manas consciousness, working tirelessly to misidentify everything as 'self',
stop for even just one second?
A viewer left a comment
that I think explains it better than I can.
They said:
'Perhaps cultivation isn't about organizing the warehouse better'
'or finding a more proper place for everything.'
'Perhaps it’s the opposite:'
'it's seeing clearly why I can't let go'
'and why I keep trying to find a place for these things.'
'In the end,'
'even the manager busy tidying the warehouse'
'must also be let go.'
This
is the true second half of the Vijnaptimatrasiddhi-shastra.
Today, we have only taken this machine apart
to see its components and how they turn.
As for how to make this machine, which constantly fabricates a 'self',
gradually grow quiet—
that requires deeper mastery.
Finally, I want to ask you:
The next time you settle into stillness,
try to look within for that 'self'.
What I am curious about is:
Is what you find
actually a solid, substantial thing,
or is it the very process of 'searching' itself?
Tell me what you find
in the comments section below.
I am Wang Lijie.
See you next time.