Table Of Content

Table of Contents Title Page Introduction Welcome Fifty Verses on the Nature of Consciousness PART I - Store Consciousness I - The Mind Is a Field Chapter 2 - Every Kind of Seed Chapter 3 - Nothing Is Lost Chapter 4 - Transmission Chapter 5 - Individual and Collective Seeds Chapter 6 - The Quality of the Seeds Chapter 7 - Habit Energies Chapter 8 - Fields of Perception Chapter 9 - Ripening and Emancipation Chapter 10 - The Five Universals Chapter 11 - The Three Dharma Seals Chapter 12 - Seeds and Formations Chapter 13 - Indra’s Net Chapter 14 - True and Not True Chapter 15 - Great Mirror Wisdom PART II - Manas Chapter 16 - Seeds of Delusion Chapter 17 - Mentation Chapter 18 - The Mark of a Self Chapter 19 - Discrimination Chapter 20 - Companions of Manas Chapter 21 - Shadow Follows Form Chapter 22 - Release PART III - Mind Consciousness Chapter 23 - Sphere of Cognition Chapter 24 - Perception Chapter 25 - The Gardener Chapter 26 - Non-Perception Chapter 27 - States of Mind PART IV - Sense Consciousnesses Chapter 28 - Waves upon the Water Chapter 29 - Direct Perception Chapter 30 - Mental Formations PART V - The Nature of Reality Chapter 31 - Subject and Object Chapter 32 - Perceiver, Perceived, and Wholeness Chapter 33 - Birth and Death Chapter 34 - Continuous Manifestation Chapter 35 - Consciousness Chapter 36 - No Coming, No Going Chapter 37 - Causes Chapter 38 - Conditions Chapter 39 - True Mind Chapter 40 - The Realm of Suchness PART VI - The Path of Practice Chapter 41 - The Way to Practice Chapter 42 - Flower and Garbage Chapter 43 - Interbeing Chapter 44 - Right View Chapter 45 - Mindfulness Chapter 46 - Transformation at the Base Chapter 47 - The Present Moment Chapter 48 - Sangha Chapter 49 - Nothing to Attain Chapter 50 - No Fear Afterword Other Parallax Press Books By Thich Nhat Hanh Copyright Page Introduction IN Understanding Our Mind, the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how cultivating a deep understanding of our own mind is essential to realizing peace in our world. As we steadfastly care for and meditate on these teachings, they ripen in us and become a source of benefaction for the entire community of living beings. It is an honor to write an introduction to this wonderful and important book. One of the sources for Thich Nhat Hanh’s Understanding Our Mind is the Abhidharma literature, the first compilation of commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings on philosophy and psychology. As a young Zen student in the late 1960s, I had heard that these commentaries were so highly valued that they had been inscribed on gold tablets, and a great temple had been built to house and protect them. Their importance in the tradition of the Buddhadharma moved me to study them, but reading them seemed so dry, like reading the lists of names in the white pages of a telephone directory. I had trouble finding any life in them, and soon gave up the study. The depth and poetic intensity of the teachings on mind that constitute this dynamic turning of the Dharma are not easily met or mastered. As part of his study as a novice monk, Thich Nhat Hanh memorized Vasubandu’s Twenty Verses and Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only. Memorization may seem difficult and old-fashioned, yet the process enables us to receive these complex teachings in small digestible bites, and to chew them until they are learned by heart and become part of our body and mind. Then meditating on them comes quite naturally because they are deeply woven into the fabric of our conscious activity. Devoting our energy wholeheartedly to the study in this traditional way reveals the deep warmth and vitality of these apparently cold and impenetrable teachings. These teachings on mind are difficult, daunting, and complex. But I have found that by going back to them when the time was right and approaching them as an amateur, again and again and again, what was originally cold stone broke open and revealed a great, warm heart, the heart of Buddha’s desire that we awaken to the wisdom at the core of these teachings. I have joyously continued to study them up until this day. Studying these Mahayana teachings on the nature of mind, we realize the mind’s true emptiness. When we realize this emptiness, we are free of the conceptual clinging that obscures the true interconnectedness of mind and nature. In this freedom we are able to teach, in creative ways, the intimate and inseparable interdependence of all living and non-living phenomena. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Understanding Our Mind is a fresh example of such creative teaching, inspired by and true to the ancients. It conveys the profound wisdom of Buddha’s teaching with the simplicity of a warm and peaceful heart. Tenshin Reb Anderson Senior Dharma Teacher, Green Dragon Temple Green Gulch Farm, November 18, 2005 Welcome THE TWELFTH-CENTURY Vietnamese Zen master Thuong Chieu (“Always Shining”) said, “When we understand how our mind works, the practice becomes easy.” This is a book on Buddhist psychology, an offering to help us understand the nature of our consciousness. These Fifty Verses are a kind of road map to the path of practice. The Fifty Verses draw upon the most important streams of Buddhist thought in India, from the Abhidharma teachings of the Pali Canon to later Mahayana teachings such as the Avatamsaka Sutra.1 These verses are based on Vasubandhu’s Twenty and Thirty Verses, which as a novice monk in Vietnam I studied in Chinese. When I came to the West, I realized that these important teachings on Buddhist psychology could open doors of understanding for people here. So in 1990 I composed the Fifty Verses to continue to polish the precious gems offered by the Buddha, Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, Xuanzang, Fazang, and others. This book was originally published as Transformation at the Base. Since its publication, psychologists, therapists, and seekers of all religions have told me how they have found this book helpful in their teachings. With this new edition, I hope to make these teachings accessible to even more readers. You don’t have to have a degree in psychology or know anything about Buddhism to enjoy this book. I have tried to present these teachings in a simple way. If, while reading, you don’t understand a particular word or phrase, please don’t try too hard. Allow the teachings to enter you as you might listen to music, or in the way the earth allows the rain to permeate it. If you use only your intellect to study these verses, it would be like putting plastic over the earth. But if you allow this Dharma rain to penetrate your consciousness, these Fifty Verses will offer you the whole of the Abhidharma teachings in a nutshell. One could spend an entire lifetime looking deeply into these teachings. Please do not be daunted by their complexity. Go slowly. Try not to read too many pages in one sitting and take the time to absorb each verse and its commentary fully before moving on to the next. Bring mindfulness, kindness, and compassion to your reading of these verses and they will shine light on how the mind works and on the very nature of consciousness. Fifty Verses on the Nature of Consciousness PART I. STORE CONSCIOUSNESS One Mind is a field in which every kind of seed is sown. This mind-field can also be called “all the seeds.” Two In us are infinite varieties of seeds— seeds of samsara, nirvana, delusion, and enlightenment, seeds of suffering and happiness, seeds of perceptions, names, and words. Three Seeds that manifest as body and mind, as realms of being, stages, and worlds, are all stored in our consciousness. That is why it is called “store.” Four Some seeds are innate, handed down by our ancestors. Some were sown while we were still in the womb, others were sown when we were children. Five Whether transmitted by family, friends, society, or education, all our seeds are, by nature, both individual and collective.