Venerable Gangxiao: Lecture on the Chan Seven Retreat, What Is "Seven"?

What Is "Seven"?

Venerable masters, with your great compassion, I'll continue from where I left off yesterday. We covered the reasons for holding a seven-day Chan retreat. There are two.

The first is this: if you've already been practicing steadily in daily life and your efforts are bearing real fruit, the retreat's purpose is to attain awakening within the fixed period, to achieve breakthrough. That's the ideal. And if we could all reach it, what more could we ask for? The retreat in that case is an exam—pass it, and you attain enlightenment. Think of it as the hundred-meter dash at the end of a long race. The ancients called the Chan hall a "field for choosing Buddhas." So perhaps we should call our hall for the nianfo seven a "Pure Land training class" or "tutoring session." Someone might protest: "I practice hard in daily life too, but I still fall apart during the retreat." That simply comes down to the depth of your practice. As the Henan saying goes, "You don't know if it's a mule or a horse until you lead it out for a run"—you only see the true difference once you're put to the test.

The second reason is that the retreat serves as a reminder: keep practicing. We ought to be practicing in daily life anyway; the retreat just sharpens that intention and gives it extra weight. Those are the two reasons.

Yesterday I made a comment that you can keep reciting the Buddha's name while eating, and keep it up while working, and I said this is impossible. Take the ancestral masters' instruction to observe the five contemplations at mealtimes. After the session, a master came to challenge me on that point, saying the remark was off. Since one person has asked, others must be wondering too. I often tell everyone: in studying Buddhism, you're permitted to learn but not to question. The reason is that any answer I give you is just my own understanding, and it has nothing to do with you, the one asking. On top of that, we are ordinary beings mired in samsara, rooted in ignorance. The teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha alone flow directly from the pure Dharma realm; nothing else does. That's why I have you all read the sutras directly, rather than running around peppering me with questions.

Let me explain once more why the mind cannot do two things at once—why you can't recite the Buddha's name while eating. The Chan ancestors put it simply: "I eat when hungry, I sleep when tired." But you? When you eat, your mind is somewhere else entirely. Just like people today: they sit down to a meal but they're not really eating—they're working the room, doing business. We're ordinary people, and ordinary people are rooted in ignorance. We were born into this evil world of the five turbidities, where much falls short of what we want. When the Buddha first attained enlightenment, he went to the Deer Park to teach the five bhikshus. What did he teach? The Four Noble Truths, turning the wheel of the Four Noble Truths *three times to liberate the five bhikshus, including Kauṇḍinya. The first of the four is the truth of suffering, which can be divided into the three sufferings, the eight sufferings, and so on. Among the eight is the suffering of not getting what one wants. As long as you are an ordinary being, you will seek things and not obtain them, reach for things and not grasp them—otherwise you'd be contradicting the Four Noble Truths.

The old master often said, "Everyone claims that in the Buddha's gate, all sincere prayers are answered. But if you pray in a way that doesn't accord with the Dharma, how could it be answered?" What does it mean to pray in accordance with the Dharma? It means to practice in accordance with the Dharma. But what do we do? We don't follow the Dharma—we follow ignorance. So how could we possibly obtain what we ask for? Can you really recite the Buddha's name while eating? No. Why? Because you won't get what you ask for. Why not? Because you're rooted in ignorance. Is there anyone who can eat and recite the Buddha's name at the same time, without either suffering? Yes—who? Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, through the perfect penetration of the ear faculty, in which all the sense organs function interchangeably and without obstruction.

I also brought up the saying, "It is better to have no books than to believe everything in them." A master asked, "How can books be untrustworthy?" What I meant is this: you should still trust books, but not trust them completely. You can't get lost in the words and lose yourself. I won't presume to lecture on Buddhist sutras and treatises, so let's talk about worldly books instead. Take Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), the first of the Twenty-Four Histories. Its status and value are unmatched. But consider: when Xiang Yu saw the might of the First Emperor of Qin, he couldn't help blurting out, "He can be taken and replaced by me!" His uncle was so alarmed he clapped a hand over his mouth. When Xiang Yu said this, he was terrified of anyone else hearing it—every extra person who knew meant more danger. How did Sima Qian come to know? When Chen Sheng and Wu Guang plotted their rebellion, they were terrified of being exposed, yet Sima Qian wrote about it with vivid, lifelike detail. How did he know? Is the Shiji history or fiction? Of course, we can't say that just because no one else witnessed something, it didn't happen. I've never met my great-grandfather, but I'm certain he existed. Still, these two cases can't be put on the same footing, because direct witness is valid cognition (pratyakṣa), while inferring that I have a great-grandfather is inferential cognition (anumāna)—they're two quite different things. So when it comes to books, you must hold something in reserve.

I realize I've drifted far from the topic of the seven-day retreat. But since people asked, I'll say my piece—please bear with me.

Now that we've covered those two points, let's turn to what "seven" actually means. Venerable Rende already addressed this yesterday morning. It's said that human beings have eight consciousnesses: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, manas, and alaya-vijñāna. The seventh of these is the root affliction behind our cycle of birth and death.

In the Theravada tradition, known in Chinese as the "Small Vehicle," only six consciousnesses are taught: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. There's no manas or alaya-vijñāna. To clarify a thing properly, you have to lay out its origins and development. Let me give a rough sketch based on how Buddhism actually spread.

In its earliest period, Theravada acknowledged only six consciousnesses. With just these six—eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind—the problem of birth and death could already be resolved and practitioners could attain awakening. So if these six were enough, why introduce manas and alaya-vijñāna? Because as new questions arose, the six-consciousness framework grew unwieldy. The secular world is much the same. Take the geocentric model—the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. Whenever people discovered a new astronomical phenomenon, they'd add another small circle to the geocentric orbit map. Discover another phenomenon, add another small circle to that. Since astronomical discoveries never end, the geocentric map grew more and more labyrinthine. Copernicus finally scrapped the whole system, switched coordinate frames, and proposed the heliocentric model. I imagine that if computers as powerful as today's had existed in his time, he might not have needed to overturn geocentrism at all—calculating orbits within the old model wouldn't have been all that hard. We now know that motion is relative, and the notion of a "center" is meaningless—there is no absolute center.

The same is true in Buddhism. Using six consciousnesses to explain later doctrinal questions became too complicated, so the Mahayana tradition simply introduced the seventh consciousness. What is the relationship between manas and the mind consciousness? Let's use an analogy. In the Theravada framework, mind consciousness is defined very broadly: nearly anything having to do with thinking can be placed inside this set. Manas, by contrast, is more narrowly defined. In the standard explanation, manas is the function that clings to a self. From this angle, Theravada's decision to include self-clinging within the broader mind consciousness isn't wrong—Mahayana simply carves it out as a separate category to make certain explanations simpler. In other words, the set of manas was already contained within Theravada's set of mind consciousness; Mahayana takes it out and gives it its own name. Mahayana's "mind consciousness" is what remains of Theravada's mind consciousness once you remove the manas subset and the alaya-vijñāna subset.

During the Mahayana period, the bodhisattvas singled out this function of self-clinging from the larger set of cognitive activities and named it manas-vijñāna. Among the three marks of existence, "all dharmas are without self" is the seal of seals—the most essential. It is precisely because of this self-clinging that we cycle through birth and death. This self-clinging is the seventh consciousness.

Let me give an example. Consider the term hanjian, the Chinese traitors who collaborated with the Japanese during World War II. In the popular imagination, China produced a great many of them during the war—films, novels, and school textbooks have all reinforced that impression. But this is misleading. Many of those people weren't willing collaborators at all; they were driven by circumstance or the environment they were in. Take ordinary soldiers: if their commanding officer became a collaborator and issued an order, what could the soldiers do? The concept of "mind consciousness" is just like the concept of "hanjian"—the scope of the term can be drawn widely or narrowly. Draw it wide, and there are many hanjian; draw it narrow, and there are few. Likewise, if we define mind consciousness broadly, a single concept suffices. Define it strictly, and manas emerges as a distinct category.

The Mahayana tradition adopted the stricter definition of mind consciousness, so manas-vijñāna came into being as a separate category.

Venerable Rende said: we're studying the Eight Consciousnesses Normative Verse (Bashī Guījù Sòng), which covers all eight consciousnesses. So why call this a "seven-day" retreat, not an "eight-day" retreat? Because the seventh consciousness, manas, clings to a self, and is the head of the wheel of birth and death. Du Fu's "Earlier Frontier Poems" has a line: "To catch the bandits, first catch the king." The seventh manas-vijñāna is the "king." It is what keeps us spinning in samsara—so we must attack it. Hence the "seven-day retreat." We need to keep our eyes fixed on it at all times. But in truth, we can't keep a direct watch on manas-vijñāna; we can only work through the first six consciousnesses. We may practice on the level of the first six, but the goal is always to reach the seventh. So even though we practice on the first six, we still call it a "seven-day retreat." When one reaches the First Ground of Joy, the seventh consciousness begins to undergo a fundamental transformation, turning into the wisdom of equality.

In the past, Theravada practitioners looked down on Mahayana, claiming Mahayana was not the word of the Buddha. Today, Mahayana practitioners look down on Theravada, saying it is incomplete. Take mind consciousness, for example. Mahayana says mind consciousness can be interrupted—say, in a state of extreme unconsciousness, like a deep faint. But even if your mind consciousness is interrupted, you don't die, do you? Why not? Because the seventh manas-vijñāna's firm self-clinging is still operating, and the seed-flow of the eighth alaya-vijñāna is still going—so you don't die. Actually, this isn't a problem within Theravada, because in Theravada doctrine, mind consciousness never truly stops. You can't simply take a Mahayana view and impose it on Theravada.

Also, this retreat runs from the 11th to the 17th, which is only six full days in actual time. So how can a six-day event be called a seven-day retreat? It still counts, because the intent of breaking through the seventh consciousness hasn't changed.

Why do other temples usually hold standard seven-day retreats? Some places talk about holding seven seven-day retreats or ten seven-day retreats in succession—forty-nine days or seventy days—each of which is made up of seven-day segments. In Buddhism, seven is an auspicious number. The original meaning of a seven-day retreat is that during the retreat, participants cannot move around freely. If you were to hold seven seven-day retreats in a row, the monastery would need to prepare supplies for forty-nine days, which makes the logistics easier. If you said you were holding a seven-day retreat but only held it for one day, of course it would still technically be called a seven-day retreat in name, but how would the monastery prepare for that? So today, seven-day retreats are always seven full days long—this is convention, habit, nothing more.

To sum up, what "seven" refers to is the manas-vijñāna, the seventh consciousness. It does not refer to a period of seven days. You may all understand this already, but most of you haven't been ordained long. Yesterday the abbot mentioned we'd be studying the Eight Consciousnesses Normative Verse, and from that you should know this. But in fact we didn't cover that text in this session, and I won't be teaching it to you either, so I've explained it again here.

Tomorrow we'll discuss "how to practice during the seven-day retreat." That's all for today.