TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)It is (the mind of a person) coming into contact with an object without
consideration .......0 the chief of guhyakasl When one expends three aeons (kalpa M ),
one overcomes one hundred and sixty minds, which is obtained by
once, twice, three times, four times and five times multiplying by two,
the supermundane mind occurs within him. That is to say:
As this (world) is nothing but (the aggregate of) the skandhas ( n:),
iitman ( ~) does not exist at all.
This world is to be abandoned as it is of no use, because it is
nothing more than the object of senses.
,25It is of course tenable to assume that those one hundred and sixty minds are
mundane and occur' only once at the last stage of the eight mundane minds
(iltil3,i\,C_,,). However, inasmuch as we must recognize the fact that these one
hundred and sixty minds are of such importance that they are referred to by the
title of the first chapter of the Vairocaniibhisambodhi-sutra and occupy as much
as one quarter of the whole chapter, we can not merely be contented with the
hitherto accepted interpretation.
We would like to reconstruct the structure of human mind on the two co-
ordinates, viz. the ordinate of the vertical process of progressive grades of mind
( ,c.,~"b-~£Dlk~) and the abscissa of the horizontal one hundred and sixty
minds.
From this point of view, we notice that Vajrapii.J:Ii's questions refer to nothing
other than this total structure of human mind to be understood in both vertical
and horizontal terms. When he asked "the characteristics of the mind (thus)
arisen" (sems shyes pa/:li mtshan iiid), he was referring to the mind of a bod-
hisattva who has entered into the first stage of the bodhisattvas (10:f:!B), which is
the ideal state described in the answer of the Lord as "the highest stage of the
Great Vehicle" (theg pa chen po/:li go /:lphan mchog ** lfl.§{:ii:). This "highest"
mind on the vertical scale is also composed of one hundred and sixty horizontal
minds such as "the mind of desire" ( J~>C..') and so on.
We ass•1me that this was the original interpretation of the structure of mind
within the Vairocaniibhisambodhi-sutra. However, we only occasionally get a
glimpse of it in an exceptional remark appearing in the commentators, viz. Sub-
hakarasrilha (tf~ift, died 735 A.D.) and Buddhaguhya, both of them took the
one hundred and sixty minds only as mundane. The only example we can find in
Buddhaguhya's commentary is as follows:
sems hyi dfws po drug cu rnams las brgya drug cur /:lphel ba ymi sgrib
pa/:li cha phra rags gsum du phye sle gsum po de rnams re re shin yan
gsum gsum du phye bas rnam pa dgur blta/:lo II de Ia sgirb pa chen