Xuanzang translated thousands of volumes of scriptures,
but wrote only four poems by his own hand.
He translated 75 Buddhist scriptures
and 1,335 volumes of literature.
He almost single-handedly brought the entire library of Indian Buddhism to China.
Yet this architect of a translation empire,
legend says, left behind only one original work of his own.
It wasn't a book,
nor a thesis,
but four poems.
Forty-eight lines in total,
consisting of 336 characters.
Hello,
everyone.
I am Wang Lijie.
These four poems are called the Verses on the Structure of the Eight Consciousnesses.
If the 'Shastra on the Door to Understanding the Hundred Dharmas' is the periodic table of Yogacara,
and the 'Thirty Verses on Consciousness-only' is its constitution,
then the 'Verses on the Eight Consciousnesses' is its clinical diagnostic manual.
It doesn't tell you what the world is;
it tells you
what your consciousness is doing at this very moment.
First, let me be honest with you.
Regarding whether this work was actually written by Xuanzang himself,
there is actually debate in the academic community.
Modern scholars like Zhou Shuijia and Lü Cheng have raised doubts,
suggesting it might be the work of someone from the late Tang Dynasty
attributed to Xuanzang.
Their reasons include the use of imprecise terminology,
such as listing 'wrong cognition' alongside 'direct perception' and 'inference' as the Three Modes of Cognition.
Logically, this doesn't quite match Xuanzang's characteristically precise style.
But regardless of the author,
the status of this text in Yogacara is undisputed.
For 1,300 years,
it has been a mandatory quick-reference manual for almost every eminent monk.
Today, we won't dwell on the authorship,
but rather break down what it actually says.
336 characters,
four poems,
each written for a specific department in your consciousness system.
One for the first five consciousnesses,
one for the sixth,
one for the seventh,
and one for the eighth.
Each poem is divided into three sections.
The first two describe the daily operation of that consciousness,
while the third describes what it can eventually be upgraded into.
The structures of the four poems are perfectly parallel,
like four standardized medical check-up reports,
just for different subjects.
Let's start with the first one,
the Verse on the First Five Consciousnesses.
The opening four characters are crucial:
'Nature-realm, Direct Perception.'
'Nature-realm' (Xing Jing)
refers to the raw data your five senses encounter:
light, sound waves, smells, tastes, and touch.
'Direct Perception' (Xian Liang)
is the moment of immediate manifestation,
without any judgment or reasoning.
Your eyes see a patch of red;
before you even have time to think, 'This is a rose,'
that presentation of pure red
is 'Nature-realm, Direct Perception.'
Why are these four characters important?
Because they reveal a fact you overlook every day:
your sensory system itself is extremely clean.
It doesn't lie.
The color you see is just color;
the sound you hear is just sound.
All the stories, judgments, and emotional reactions
are added by later processes.
The first five consciousnesses are like five high-precision sensors.
They do only one thing:
transmit data as it is.
Your suffering is never caused by the sensors;
it's the back-end processing program that has a problem.
The verse also says: 'Three join, two separate to observe the World.'
Smell, taste, and touch must have direct contact with the object to perceive.
This is called 'joining.'
Eyes and ears can perceive from a distance,
this is called 'Separation.'
In just seven characters,
the working modes of the five sensors are clearly explained.
Appreciate the density of this information;
in today's terms,
it works like a single line of code comments,
precise without a single redundant word.
The next line is particularly interesting:
'The foolish struggle to distinguish consciousness from its base.'
The 'base' refers to the sensory organs themselves—
the eyeballs, eardrums, and tongue.
'Consciousness' is the cognitive function relying on these organs.
Ordinary people cannot distinguish between the two.
You think you see with your eyes,
but Yogacara says
the eyeball is merely the hardware,
while visual consciousness is the software running on it.
If the hardware is broken,
the software naturally cannot run,
but the hardware itself is not the software.
Why is this distinction important?
Because it answers a common concern:
For a blind or deaf person,
is their consciousness incomplete?
The Verses on the Structure of the Eight Consciousnesses answer:
No.
The seeds of their visual
and auditory consciousness still exist intact within the Alaya-vijnana.
Current hardware conditions simply don't support their execution.
It's like when your phone has no signal;
the messaging app isn't broken,
it's just out of range of a cell tower.
The final section of the Five Senses Verse
describes the state after an upgrade:
'When Perfect Mirror Wisdom first dawns, it becomes taintless,'
'and through triple manifestations, the wheel of suffering ceases.'
Once the five senses transform into the Wisdom of Accomplishment,
they no longer just passively receive signals.
Instead, they become precision tools for serving all beings.
Your eyes no longer just look at flowers or phones;
they see the true suffering of sentient beings.
Your ears no longer just hear gossip and noise;
they hear the pain that goes unspoken.
The sensors remain the same five sensors,
but the operating system driving them has been completely replaced.
Next is the second hymn,
the Verse on the Sixth Consciousness.
The sixth consciousness is the one you are most familiar with—
the very thing you are using right now to listen to me
and follow my thoughts.
The verse begins:
'It encompasses the three natures, three cognitions, and three realms.'
Compare this to the start of the Five Senses Verse and you'll see.
The five senses deal only with 'nature-realm direct perception,'
contacting one realm and using one cognitive mode.
The sixth consciousness is upgraded across all three categories.
It covers good, evil, and neutral orientations.
It uses direct, inferential, and fallacious cognitions.
It traverses nature, relative, and solitary-image realms.
What does this mean?
The sixth consciousness is the most flexible and versatile in the system.
It can do anything,
but that is precisely its most dangerous quality.
It is what can make you a Buddha,
and it is what can lead you to hell.
The verse also includes a very practical line:
'Directing and fulfilling karmas are pulled by its power.'
'Directing karma' is the force that sets the general direction for the next life.
'Fulfilling karma' provides the details of what your life is actually like.
Both types of karmic force
are accumulated little by little by the sixth consciousness
in every judgment and every choice you make.
If you make a virtuous decision today,
the sixth consciousness plants a good seed in the Alaya-vijnana.
If you tell a lie today,
it plants an evil seed.
Over time,
these seeds weave the script of your future.
That's why the verse says we are pulled by karmic power.
You think you are choosing freely,
but every choice you make is programming your future self.
There are seven characters in the verse
that are the most worth remembering in the entire Eighty Gathas.
"Action through body and speech, the sixth is supreme."
What your body does
and what your mouth says—
the ultimate commands are all issued by the sixth consciousness.
The first five consciousnesses only perceive;
the seventh only clings;
the eighth only stores.
Only the sixth consciousness is the operator who calls the shots,
making your hands act and your mouth speak.
What does this mean?
It means the main battlefield of spiritual practice is the sixth consciousness.
You can't change the sensitivity of your sensors yet,
and you can't reach the depths of the Alaya consciousness,
but you can train the sixth consciousness.
Every time you choose not to lose your temper,
every time you stop yourself before cursing,
every time you change "I'm so unlucky" to "Current causes and conditions are thus,"
you are updating the parameters of your sixth consciousness.
This isn't spiritual chicken soup;
it's a real-time rewrite of your factory settings.
The sixth consciousness eventually upgrades into the Wisdom of Rational Observation.
The verse describes it as:
"Pure and bright observation illuminates the universe."
Your thoughts and judgments are no longer polluted by bias.
You observe everything exactly as it is.
When you look at a person or an event,
you stop automatically spinning stories or reflexively applying labels.
Instead, you clearly see its original nature.
Part Three:
The Verses on the Seventh Consciousness.
This is the most heart-piercing of the four sections.
It begins with seven characters:
"Cognized with attachment and obscured, connecting feeling and essence."
What is the state of "cognizing with attachment"?
It's when the Manas consciousness takes something real
and projects a layer of false meaning onto it.
While the Alaya consciousness is a perfectly fine storehouse,
the Manas insists on grabbing it and saying,
"This is ME."
It's like looking in a mirror;
the image is a real optical reflection,
but you insist that the image is your true self.
You've attached a fictional claim of ownership to real data.
What does "obscured" mean?
It means to be veiled or hidden.
Though the Manas doesn't directly create good or bad karma,
it constantly blocks your ability to see the truth.
It is the master switch for all your cognitive biases.
Next are seven more characters:
"Constant, scrutinizing deliberation, followed by the notion of self."
"Constant" means never-ending.
"Scrutinizing" means examining closely.
"Deliberation" means thinking and weighing.
The Manas does one thing 24 hours a day without rest:
maintaining your sense of existence.
When you are asleep, it is still running.
Even when you meditate and enter stillness,
and your thoughts have almost stopped,
that faint feeling of "I am meditating" remains.
That is the Manas consciousness remaining powered on.
Next are the seven characters I find most profound:
"Sentient beings are suppressed by daily and nightly confusion."
"Suppressed" means constant, eternal, and uninterrupted.
All sentient beings,
day and night,
are immersed in the illusion of "self" created by the Manas.
You think you are awake,
but you are in a 24-hour daydream called "Me."
What you think of as being awake
is just a state of thinking you've woken up within a dream.
Why are these seven characters so shocking?
Because they aren't insulting you;
they are describing a verifiable fact.
Try it now:
close your eyes for three seconds.
Observe: can you find a single moment where "I" is completely absent?
You'll find it's impossible.
Even while you are observing this,
there is still a sense of 'me' watching.
This is sentient beings lost in delusion day and night.
You can verify this for yourself.
Manas-vijnana is upgraded to the Wisdom of Equality.
The verse says:
"At the First Ground of Perfect Joy, equality begins."
The Ground of Joy is the first level of the Bodhisattva path.
At that moment,
Manas-vijnana finally drops the boundary between 'mine' and 'others'.
It sees all beings as equal and without distinction.
This isn't a moral slogan
commanding you to treat everyone equally.
It is a genuine cognitive event.
You see that the border between self and others was just a dotted line drawn by Manas.
The line vanishes,
and equality arises naturally.
The final section:
The Verses on the Eighth Consciousness.
This poem deconstructs the underlying database of your consciousness system.
The opening line:
"The vastness of the Triple Store is inexhaustible."
Alaya-vijnana is called the 'Triple Store':
the storer, the stored, and the object of attachment.
The 'storer' means it can hold all 'seeds'.
The 'stored' means it is filled with these seeds.
The 'object of attachment' means Manas clings to it as the 'self'.
One word, 'Store',
three layers of function.
Explained in just seven characters.
The next line is even better:
"Upon the deep abyss, seven waves rise as the environment blows like wind."
Alaya-vijnana is like a deep ocean abyss.
The first seven consciousnesses are like seven layers of waves on the surface.
The external environment is the wind that stirs the waves.
All the turmoil you experience—mood swings and passing thoughts—
are just foam on the ocean surface.
The seabed remains calm.
Seven characters,
one metaphor,
clarifying the dynamic relationship of the entire eight-consciousness system.
Picture this imagery:
the daily anxiety, anger, excitement, and loss you feel
are all waves.
An unkind word from a friend makes you unhappy;
that's a gust of wind blowing up a wave.
You scroll through a piece of news that makes you anxious;
another gust, another wave.
But the ocean itself has never been harmed by the wind.
Waves rise and fall,
but the ocean remains the ocean.
You feel battered by your emotions,
but those are just waves cresting.
Deep within your consciousness,
that great ocean of Alaya-vijnana
remains forever still.
The reason you feel suffering
is not because the ocean is in pain,
but because you've misidentified yourself.
You think you are the wave.
Then comes the line with the most information: "Perfumed, it holds seeds, body, and world;"
"The last to leave and first to arrive, it acts as the master."
Alaya-vijnana does three things:
it receives new 'perfuming' from experiences,
it maintains existing seeds,
and it sustains your physical body and the external world.
'Last to leave and first to arrive' describes the precise mechanism of reincarnation.
Upon death, Alaya-vijnana is the last to depart.
At birth, it is the first to arrive.
It is the true master of your life.
But you never knew it existed,
because you always thought 'I' was that voice talking in your head.
The Eighth Consciousness eventually upgrades to the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom.
"The Great Mirror and the Stainless State arise together,"
"Illuminating all microscopic worlds across the ten directions."
The warehouse of seeds is completely purified,
becoming a great, dustless mirror
that reflects everything exactly as it is.
Think about how precise this imagery is.
A mirror does not choose what it reflects.
It reflects whatever comes before it.
It doesn't say, "This person is attractive, I'll look longer."
Or, "That person is ugly, I won't reflect them."
Good or bad, beautiful or ugly;
it reflects as they come,
and clears as they go.
This is the state of the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom.
The Alaya consciousness transforms from a biased storage system
into a completely neutral mirror.
Now that we've deconstructed the four poems,
let's look at them together.
You'll notice an ingenious design.
It's not just describing four sets of consciousness;
it's a diagnostic flowchart from outside to in, shallow to deep.
First, check for sensor malfunctions.
Next, check for processor bias.
Then, check the hidden program generating the "self."
Finally, check the underlying database.
It's like a senior engineer troubleshooting a system failure:
Input terminal first,
logic layer second,
middleware third,
and core storage last.
Three hundred and thirty-six characters—
a complete diagnostic report of consciousness.
Regardless of who penned it,
the author
must have truly mastered the entire system of Yogacara.
They compressed the most vital information into the fewest words.
Think about it;
isn't this exactly what we strive for today
with information compression and knowledge distillation?
Discard the redundant;
retain the essence.
Thirteen hundred years ago,
someone had already achieved this.
Lastly, there's a vital detail implied in the verses.
The third stanza of each poem
specifies the timeline of transformation.
The 6th consciousness begins to transform at the First Bhumi of the Bodhisattva.
The 7th also begins to loosen at the First Bhumi.
But the 8th only begins to release its store at the 8th Bhumi,
reaching total clarity after the Diamond Path.
This means spiritual practice has a clear engineering roadmap.
First, you change your way of thinking.
Then, you change your pattern of self-attachment.
Finally, you reach that deepest storehouse of seeds.
The sequence cannot be skipped.
You can't rewrite core firmware without updating the OS.
This also answers a question many viewers ask:
"I feel calm while meditating,
but return to my old self back in daily life."
"Is practice useless?"
It's not useless;
it's just that you're working on different levels.
During meditation, you temporarily calm the 6th consciousness's distracting thoughts,
but the self-attachment of the 7th remains untouched.
You think you are practicing,
but the Manas consciousness whispers in the shadows,
"Look,
I'm making progress."
Your sense of calm may itself be a subtle form of ego inflation.
True transformation must reach the 7th or even 8th level.
That's not something a few meditations can solve;
it requires consistent, systematic awareness throughout daily life.
The Verses Delineating the Eight Consciousnesses lay out this path clearly.
Step by step.
It cannot be rushed.
The next time you are provoked or angry,
try using this diagnostic manual.
Ask yourself three questions:
One,
"What raw data did my five sensors just input?"
Two,
"What story did my 6th consciousness weave around this data?"
Three,
"Which 'self' is my 7th consciousness defending in this story?"
Once you finish these three steps,
you are already using this 1,300-year-old tool for the mind.
Among these four poems,
which one resonates with you the most?
At which level of consciousness do you most often get stuck in daily life?
I am Leo Wang.
See you next time.