Buddhism : Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, Vol. VI

A CRITICAL TANTRISM

minds occuring at any moment all of the three conditions of the existence of the

world of Vairocana are retained, and that these one hundred and sixty monadic

or substantial minds are nothing other than the bodhicitta (the mind of enlighten-

ment) as is shown in the axiom 'prajiiii plus upiiya is bodhicitta' (see p. 180).

This constitutes the world ofVairocana as Buddhaguhya rightly says:

"One hundred and sixty mundane minds etc. are the material cause

( upiidiina-hiiraf)a) of Vairocana".^31

Furthermore, we notice that the idea of one hundred and sixty minds makes
the meaning of the maxim 'recognize your mind truly and thoroughly' clear.
This maxim is commanding us to live our entire life of 'the three great uncount-
able aeons' =:.;klliiT{~iiil.f;t;;iJ) completely through the incessant effort of recogniz-
ing our own one hundred and sixty minds at every moment and overcoming
them through actions for the benefit of others.
The total structure of human mind thus being reconstructed, it becomes
obvious that the world of Vairocana is to be expressed in a globular form com-
posed of all the lives of all living beings; that is, the accumulations of innumer-
able layers of one hundred and sixty minds, concentrated toward their common
aim, Vairocana as the centre of the world.
As is already shown by both Buddhaguhya and Subhakarasimha, the vertical
process of the progress of mind, which is the process of decreasing the defile-
ments or obstructions of each layer of one hundred and sixty minds, is divided
into nine stages. It is reasonable to divide the entire process into ten layers by
placing one more layer of one hundred and sixty minds which are completely
purified upon these nine layers as Kukai describes m his Himitsu-maf)qala-
jiijiishin-ron (:JilH~~~~ft-tf±•L..'~fm") as follows:

"The process of the progress of mind is to be divided into innumerable

stages; however, we would like to divide it for convenience' sake into

ten and classify innumerable minute stages of mind into these ten big

classes. "^32

If we try to draw the figure of this world on a plane, it is convenient to add

two more layers of one hundred and sixty minds completely purified upon these

ten layers and depict them schematically as twelve concentric circles with

the diameter of the central circle the same in width as each of the twelve layers

(fig. 1).

If we draw a small circle of the same diameter as the width of each layer on

the outermost layer of these concentric circles and connect it with two parallel

lines with the central circle, we can indicate the entire course of the life of a

person who lives in this world of Vairocana. Or, we can express it as a line of

twelve small circles set between these parallel lines. The small circle, which

indicates the mind of a person at any moment as the aggregate of one hundred