Venerable Master Gangxiao: Lecture Notes on the Mahāyāna Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, Part 5

Venerable Master Gangxiao: Lecture Notes on the Mahāyāna Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, Part 5

Question: What is a "seed"? The Yogācāra school borrows the term from everyday life. In old agrarian societies, people noticed something simple: if you plant a single grain of wheat in winter, you can harvest a whole handful by the following summer. The handful you reap is essentially the same kind of thing as the grain you planted—both are wheat seeds. But the handful is obviously not that very same grain you put in the ground. Biology calls this heredity and variation. In plain language, the relation between the one grain and the many is a subtle one—neither simply the same nor simply different. Not the same, yet connected; not identical, yet of one kind. We call the grain planted the year before the "seed" (the handful harvested this year can be called the "manifestation"). Mind dharmas, material dharmas, and mental factors all work in much the same way as that single grain; Buddhism says they carry their own "seeds." Does that make sense? Of course, Buddhism doesn't just borrow the word "seed"—it loads the term with new meaning, turning it into a Buddhist concept in its own right. We won't get into those new connotations here. "Seed" is a major idea in Yogācāra, and it's worth thinking through carefully on your own time after class.

In essence, the mind lords, mental factors, material dharmas, and the dharmas not corresponding to the mind that we'll get to shortly are all conditioned dharmas—without self-nature, produced from the coming together of causes and conditions. But there's a difference: mind lords, mental factors, and material dharmas can at least be pointed to, while the dharmas not corresponding to the mind can't be pointed to at all.

Question: What do you mean by "can be pointed to"? That's just folksy talk from back home—hard to pin down in words. Let's move on and take the twenty-four dharmas not corresponding to the mind one by one.

1. Attainment (得). What does "attainment" mean? Some say it's "acquiring," others say "accomplishing"—close enough. Something you didn't have before, but now do—that's attainment. Put a bit more formally, attainment is the transfer of material dharmas and the reception of mental dharmas. You won't find this wording in any book; it's my own coinage. The language in the texts is clunky and hard to follow. Let me give an example. Suppose I, Gangxiao, take part in a sports meet and win first place in a race. The organizers hand me a pen as a prize. Before the race I had no pen; after the race I did. That pen moved from them to me—a material dharma transferred—and that's what constitutes "attainment." Take another example: I catch a bad cold. I didn't have it yesterday, but I have it today. That's also attainment. The prize pen I can hold in my hand—the pen itself has its own seed, you might say. But the "attainment" of the prize doesn't have that kind of substance; it could be called a seed without self-nature. The cold itself makes me miserable, so it has its own seed; but the "attainment" of the cold doesn't carry that weight.

2. Life faculty (命根). This term is notoriously hard to define. Great monks of old have offered plenty of definitions, and most of them are awkward. Master Anhui, in the Mahāyāna Extensive Treatise on the Five Aggregates, says the life faculty is "of the nature of determining the time-limit of existence within the common group, as drawn out by prior karma." Master Xuanzang, in the Treatise on the Establishment of Consciousness-Only, says: "Relying on the seed of this self-arising consciousness, the functional differences produced by karma determine a fixed duration of existence." Master Kuiji, in his commentary on the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, writes: "Relying on the continuous function on the seed of the eighth consciousness drawn out by karma, which holds material and mental dharmas together without break, the life faculty is provisionally established." Master Puguang, in his subcommentary on the same text, says: "Drawn out by prior karma, following the length of one's lifespan, the duration of existence is fixed; this is called the life faculty." Master Yizhong puts it: "Relying on the seed of the eighth consciousness drawn out by karma, which keeps material and mental dharmas unbroken, it is called the life faculty." There are four or five more besides, but let's leave them aside. For now, let's set aside every one of these so-called definitions from our forebears and use none of them. The life faculty is a nominal dharma. Here's how I'd suggest understanding it: take me, Gangxiao. From the moment my parents brought me into the world until now, my breathing has never stopped, my heart has kept beating, my neural activity has never ceased—so you could say I have a life faculty. As long as I'm alive, I have one. Humans are the same; so are dogs. A dog, from the moment it's born, has a life faculty as long as it's still breathing. In Buddhist terms, so long as a living being remains in the world with lifespan, vital warmth, and consciousness all present, we say it has a life faculty. You might as well just remember it this way: life faculty equals lifespan plus vital warmth plus consciousness. Does that work for everyone?

Question: Still, couldn't you give a more formal definition in modern language? Then if someone asks us later, we'd have something to offer them. Personally, I think it's better not to define it. Any theory, no matter how tight, is bound to have gaps and a limited range of application. Plane geometry is rigorous. Solid geometry is rigorous too. But you can't mix the two. Newtonian mechanics is rigorous as well—but at high speeds, you have to switch to relativity. You all like Jin Yong's martial-arts novels, don't you? The highest level of skill is having no fixed moves or forms. As long as you have moves, a determined opponent can eventually find a counter. The real mastery lies in having no moves at all. For Buddhism—a teaching that aims at complete liberation—if I pin down "life faculty" with a fixed definition, I'd just be making things harder for myself. You only need to understand it; when you explain it to someone else later, put it in your own words on the spot. If I hand you a fixed definition, I'm really handing you a rope to tie up your own thinking with.

3. Commonality of groups (众同分). This means similarity of kind. The world's things differ in countless ways, yet they always share something in common. Science says everything is made of a hundred-odd elements; Buddhism says they're manifestations of the ālayavijñāna. Change never strays far from its source—whether that source is elements, the ālayavijñāna, or anything else you like. For now, let's just say that things sharing common attributes form a "commonality of groups." You and I both have heads; we can call each other members of a common group. Humans have similar karmic recompense, so humans form a common group; dogs have similar karmic recompense, so dogs form one; we are Buddhists, all of us revere the Buddha, so Buddhists form a common group. There are two kinds of commonality of groups:

A. Mental commonality. Similarity in thought. We are all Buddhists; we follow the Buddha's teachings. B. Material commonality. Similarity in material dharmas. When I go to the hospital, the doctor first orders a blood test for me. When the next patient comes in, the doctor orders a blood test again. We both have blood—that's material commonality. All human beings have heads, necks, torsos, and limbs.

4. Heterogeneous nature (异生性). "Heterogeneous" means ordinary being; here "nature" refers to habitual tendencies, not original nature. Heterogeneous nature means that ordinary beings differ from one another in thought and in kind. It's the idea that a thousand people make a thousand faces—even though we're all human, no two are alike. When I, Gangxiao, stand next to this gentleman, anyone passing by can see we're two different people. Why? Because I have freckles and he doesn't. Our appearances differ. In fact, the differences between people are everywhere: different names, different hobbies, different tastes in food, different complexions, different regions, the gap between ordinary beings still caught in saṃsāra and liberated sages, and so on. All told, heterogeneous nature is simply the sum of differences among ordinary beings. Commonality of groups is the shared characteristic of beings; heterogeneous nature is their distinguishing characteristic.

5. Unconscious meditation (无想定). There is a class of non-Buddhist practitioners who reason like this: why is life so full of dissatisfaction? Mainly because people keep thinking—thinking here, thinking there, with no ground under their feet, never at peace. So they resolve to stop thinking, and they keep working toward that goal of "not thinking." Over time, they really do manage it; the wild thoughts fall away, and the six consciousnesses—eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind—find it hard to arise. At this point they feel that not thinking is genuinely far more peaceful than thinking, and they take themselves to have reached nirvāṇa. Buddhism labels them non-Buddhist practitioners. Even so, their cultivation is genuinely impressive; their only weakness is the lack of right view. If they could correct that, they'd surely attain liberation. You should never look down on non-Buddhist practitioners—they're all cultivators of considerable attainment, just lacking right view. From the standpoint of Mahāyāna Buddhism, anyone who doesn't aim at Buddhahood is a non-Buddhist practitioner. If I only seek my own escape from birth and death, and practice the Four Noble Truths without concern for others, what is that? …Right, let's loosen up a bit, everyone. You're young—don't be so solemn. That's the Śrāvakayāna, and it too should be classed as non-Buddhist, because without bodhicitta it doesn't count. Some say this samādhi is practiced by a class of non-Buddhist practitioners in the desire realm; others say it's practiced in the form realm as well. We won't worry about which—either way, we don't practice it.

6. Cessation of perception and feeling meditation (灭尽定). When a meditator's practice becomes highly refined, the first six consciousnesses find it hard to arise, and the afflictions associated with the seventh consciousness also disappear. Unconscious meditation focuses on "perception," while cessation of perception and feeling meditation works on the two levels of "feeling" (the feeling factor is the root of craving and desire) and "perception" (the perception factor can spark disputes over views). The Treatise on the Establishment of Consciousness-Only says this meditation is practiced by saints; Master Kuiji, in his commentary on the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, says the same. Most modern works follow Xuanzang and Kuiji in calling it a saint's practice—Yang Baiyi's Essential Meaning of Consciousness-Only, Yu Lingbo's Outline of Consciousness-Only, Han Tingjie's Introduction to Consciousness-Only, and so on. But Master Xuanhua disagreed; he said it's practiced by non-Buddhist practitioners. We won't take sides here—just be aware that this view exists.

7. Unconscious retribution (无想报). Some call it the unconscious fruit, others the unconscious result. Suppose I'm fed up with life and start reflecting: why is it so painful? Oh—it's because I'm always thinking about this and that. That's the sixth consciousness at work. So I make a point of not thinking, and make "not thinking" my aim. After a long time, I attain the unconscious meditation. Then I get reborn in the Unconscious Heaven. How long do I stay? Three possibilities:

A. With the highest grade of practice, one can be reborn in the Unconscious Heaven in the very next life. B. With the middle grade, rebirth may come in the next life, the one after, or after hundreds or thousands of lives. C. With the lowest grade, one may or may not reach the Unconscious Heaven at all.

There are four kinds of karmic recompense: retribution experienced in this very life; retribution in the next life; retribution in the third life or later; and indeterminate retribution, where the timing is unknown. The unconscious meditation has no "retribution in this very life." At the moment of rebirth, the sixth consciousness is still active, but once born in the Unconscious Heaven, it ceases. One stays there for five hundred great kalpas (divided into three grades: those of the lowest grade stay less than five hundred great kalpas; those of the highest stay the full five hundred), and afterward one falls, re-enters the round of rebirth, and the sixth consciousness reappears. Someone once asked: if I enter this state and never come out, won't I avoid falling? Right—if you don't come out, you're fine. But some things aren't up to you. When the time comes, disturbances arrive; karma comes knocking, and there's no dodging it. By the three realms, the Unconscious Heaven is in the form realm; by the four dhyānas and eight samādhis, it lies within the fourth dhyāna, in the Heaven of Vast Fruition. Unconscious retribution is the karmic fruit attained through practicing the unconscious meditation.

8. Nominal designation (名身). This refers to the words we use to describe the inherent nature of dharmas. For example: flower, pine, bamboo, person (single-character terms—the Yogācāra school calls these "names" [名]); peony, cuckoo, teacup, Gangxiao, book (two-character terms—called "nominal designations" [名身]); Bolshevik, Albania, anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi (terms of three or more characters—called "multiple nominal designations" [多名身]). Any given phenomenon (a dharma) must have attributes of its own (a self-nature) and must persist for some time before we can come to know it; for convenience, we give it a name. In other words, names are provisionally set up by our sixth consciousness over the dharmas; that name is the nominal designation. When a baby is born, for instance, the parents have to give it a name. Nominal designations are used to explain the (self-)nature of dharmas, but they aren't the same as the dharmas they explain—they are nominal constructs. That is, the designation can never quite capture the dharma it points to (the word doesn't fully reach the thing). Take the name "Gangxiao"—that's a nominal designation too, but it isn't essentially tied to me, Gangxiao. Punch me, Gangxiao, in the body, and I'll feel it. Punch the two characters, and I won't. Still, there is a connection between the two. When I was at Mount Jiuhua, the head of the United Front Work Department of Chizhou Prefecture—a fellow named Wu Zhaoyuan, who is also a writer—once told me he didn't care how much a book or article paid in royalties, as long as it had "by Wu Zhaoyuan" on it. Originally, the three characters "Wu Zhaoyuan" have nothing essentially to do with the person Wu Zhaoyuan. But when others see those three characters on a book, they wonder: who is this Wu Zhaoyuan? They ask around. Oh—Wu Zhaoyuan is the head of the United Front Work Department of Chizhou Prefecture, and a standing director of the Anhui Provincial Writers' Association. An impression forms. Then they see another article by Wu Zhaoyuan, and immediately the person Wu Zhaoyuan comes to mind.

9. Skandha of sentences. This refers to the language and sentences that distinguish the various dharmas — for instance, "flowers bloom," "water flows," "birds chirp." Each has both a subject and a predicate, and the meaning is complete. The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (Volume 81) lists six kinds of sentence skandhas: A. Incomplete sentences, B. Complete sentences, C. Derived sentences, D. Foundational sentences, E. Labeling sentences, F. Explanatory sentences. We'll skip these here and not go into detail.

10. Skandha of written works. This refers to essays or literary compositions, which aim to convey some thought or idea. Works like Lu Xun's A Small Incident, Zhang Yigong's The Story of Criminal Li Tongzhong, Li Zhun's We Cannot Take That Path, and Liu Xinwu's Head Teacher all count as written-work skandhas. Even more substantial works — Laozi's Tao Te Ching, Marx's Das Kapital, Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber — pinnacles in different fields across the world, can also be called written-work skandhas. Names, sentences, and written works are all conventionally existent dharmas based on sound and language. "Skandha" here means an accumulation. These three — name skandha, sentence skandha, and written-work skandha — are merely distinctions within the category of material sense-objects. If you grow attached to them, the more you read the sutras, the bigger your textual obstacle becomes. But if you know how to use them skillfully, they become textual prajñā.

11. Birth. Something that didn't exist before but does now. Take a baby: there was no baby before, and now there is. We call this "birth" — though of course we don't mean the baby itself is called "birth"; rather, the dharma of "no baby before, baby after" is what's called birth. The first of the mentally non-associated compositional dharmas (cittaviprayukta-saṃskāras) is called "acquisition." Let's look at how "birth" and "acquisition" differ. "Birth" you can informally call the "formation of a thing" — once there were only parents, and now there's a baby; once there was only wood, and now there's a table. "Acquisition," by contrast, is the "transfer of a thing" — the graduation certificate already exists; it's simply handed over from the school to the graduating student.

12. Abiding. The relative stability of a thing once it has come into being. Buddhist technical language calls this "temporary existence and use at a given location." When we make wood into a table, we say the table has been "born." Once the table exists, we keep using it for years — say, ten. During those ten years the table stays relatively stable, and we call this period "abiding." Take this teacup: ever since the factory produced it, its shape has been essentially fixed. I might have chipped the rim a moment ago, but such a tiny change can be ignored. From the moment it's made until it finally breaks apart — that whole stretch of time we call "abiding."

13. Aging. From the moment of birth until death, a being is ceaselessly changing, instant by instant. Leave a small baby alone for a few years and you won't recognize them anymore. The body gradually withers and falls apart. There are two kinds of aging: aging of the body, and aging of mind. The first is the body's gradual decline into frailty; the second is the psychological progression — the blank innocence of childhood, the soaring ambitions of youth, the practicality of middle age, the listlessness of old age.

14. Impermanence, also called death. From a worldly perspective, impermanence can be likened to "change," but impermanence describes the most thorough, ultimate form of change. Buddhism teaches that the arising of any dharma requires the convergence of causes and conditions, yet when a dharma ceases, its cessation waits on no conditions — at the very moment of its "birth" it is already "dying." Arising is itself cessation. Sentient beings exist only temporarily, then pass away. A person falls ill, goes to the hospital, fails to recover, can no longer draw a breath; the three supports of life — life-force, bodily warmth, and consciousness — separate, and death occurs; the primary retribution-body transforms. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom speaks of two kinds of impermanence: moment-to-moment impermanence (the change happening in every instant) and single-lifespan impermanence (the change spanning a being's entire life from birth to death). Birth, abiding, aging, and death are generally called the four marks of conditioned dharmas. For sentient beings, we speak of birth, aging, sickness, and death; for the material world, formation, abiding, dissolution, and emptiness; for mental dharmas, birth, abiding, differentiation, and cessation.

15. Transmigration (saṃsāra). Take one grain of wheat: planted this year, it produces seeds next year; those seeds are planted again the following year to produce more seeds, which are planted again the year after to yield yet another harvest… pushed forward like this, there's no end. And if you trace it backward — where did this year's grain come from? From last year's crop. Where did last year's crop come from? From the year before that… tracing back this way, there's no beginning either. We call this phenomenon — no start to be found when looking back, no end to be found when looking forward — transmigration. In standard Buddhist terminology, it's defined as the unbroken continuity of cause and effect. I remember seeing a cartoon as a layperson: a little hedgehog rolling a watermelon, and at one point it says, "My mom taught me to roll it like this. My mom learned it from her mom, who learned it from her mom's mom…" — you could keep tracing it back forever. The story of Yu Gong Moves the Mountains says, "Sons beget sons, grandsons beget grandsons, generation after generation, without end" — the same endless chain. Afanti's "the chicken lays the egg, the egg hatches the chicken" is another example. Transmigration is sometimes also called cyclic existence: because of the different good and evil karmic causes you create, you keep revolving without cease through the six realms. The causes you made in past lives bring the fruits you experience now, and the actions of this life will bring the fruits of future lives.

16. Fixed distinction. "Fixed" means definite, absolute; "distinction" means difference. So fixed distinction means absolute difference. What's absolutely different? If you plant a cucumber seed, it absolutely cannot grow into an ear of corn. If you want to eat peanuts, you have to plant peanut seeds; you can't plant soybeans… To the classmate who just spoke up: your idea of planting soybeans, selling them, and using the money to buy peanuts has gone beyond what I'm talking about — it's just idle sophistry, and I have to toss your argument in the trash bin. Fixed distinction means that good causes absolutely yield good results, evil causes can only yield evil results; the causal relations of good and evil are entirely distinct and never confused. There's no such thing as a good cause yielding an evil result or an evil cause yielding a good result. There are three kinds of fixed distinction, according to Volume 56 of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra: fixed distinction of the substance and characteristics of cause and effect; fixed distinction of the causes producing good results; fixed distinction of the fruits of suffering and happiness. Volume 52 of the same text, however, lists five: fixed distinction between transmigration and turning back to liberation; fixed distinction of all dharmas; fixed distinction of what is experienced; fixed distinction of abiding; and fixed distinction of form and measure.

17. Correspondence. Causes and results fitting together, in accord, standing in mutual dependence. Plant watermelon seeds, and you get watermelons; with no soybeans, no soybean sprouts can grow. As long as you've planted an evil cause, no matter how well things seem right now, you'll eventually have to suffer the evil result. Someone once asked me about this. He said that, as far back as he could remember, he'd never done anything seriously bad — yet his mother died when he was young, his father died just when he needed money for college, he'd barely started seeing someone and was preparing for marriage when a car on the street broke one of his legs, leaving him permanently lame. He was completely baffled. I could only offer him my deep sympathy, and I had to answer his question very carefully. From the standpoint of karma across three lifetimes, one can absolutely give a complete explanation for his situation, but I haven't reached the stage of unimpeded understanding of principle and phenomena, so I can't tell him exactly what specific karmic cause he created, in which past life, in what year, in what place. Since I can't clarify that, all I could do was encourage him, comfort him, and urge him to face reality, giving him some guidance for the road ahead. This gentleman no longer feels inferior about his limp and is doing splendidly — we ended up becoming friends. Now let me urge all of you: when it comes to certain people — everyone praises their character in this life, yet they're poor and downtrodden, everything going against their wishes — don't presume to declare that they must have created evil karma in a past life. Of course, that statement isn't wrong, but unfortunately it doesn't resolve their confusion. Every philosophical principle in the world has to come with a corresponding methodology; if Buddhism is nothing but grand theories that can't solve real, concrete problems in life, then however complete the theory, it's meaningless. None of us has yet reached unimpeded understanding of principle and phenomena, or unimpeded understanding between all phenomena, so when it comes to certain questions — things like "specific karmic events" — it's best to sidestep them, and never pretend to have the answer. We're discussing the mentally non-associated compositional dharmas, and now we've come to one called "correspondence" — strange, isn't it? The "correspondence" here refers to the correspondence between dharmas of the same kind. "Non-associated" is the umbrella term covering all twenty-four mentally non-associated compositional dharmas, which we haven't finished going through yet. They're merely provisional labels based on a particular way of looking at things, so they don't correspond with mind (citta), mental factors (caitasika), material dharmas, or unconditioned dharmas. Hence there's no contradiction between the general category of "non-associated" and this seventeenth dharma of "correspondence."

18. Rapidity. All dharmas that arise from the convergence of causes and conditions change from moment to moment — extremely fast. Even if we look more or less the same today, tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, the cells in our bodies are ceaselessly changing: every instant, old cells die and new cells are born. A tourist passing by the door pipes up: "All you monks ever talk about is useless stuff." "Of course it's useful!" I reply. Rapidity means change at extreme speed, and you should think of it like this: "If you don't work hard when young, you'll only grieve when old." It moves fast — while you're still not old, hurry up and do something worthwhile, or when the time comes, no one will even be able to write your eulogy. This eighteenth dharma, rapidity, is similar to the fourteenth, impermanence, so note the difference: rapidity is discussed from the standpoint of the continuity of cause and effect, whereas "impermanence" is what you turn to when asking whether a thing is a person, an object, or a mental phenomenon. There are three kinds of rapidity: rapidity of all conditioned phenomena, i.e., the rapid arising and ceasing of all dharmas; rapidity of functional exertion, i.e., the swiftness of our bodily, verbal, and mental karmic actions; and rapidity of spiritual powers, which has to do with people who possess great supernatural abilities and is nothing to do with us ordinary folk.

19. Sequence. Orderly arrangement, with clear precedence and hierarchy. Take the Cihai dictionary: editing such a massive reference work is something one or two people couldn't possibly handle — it takes dozens, even hundreds of contributors. With so many names, how should they be listed? Apart from the chief editor, every other contributor is arranged by the stroke count of the first character of their surname. That gives a clear sequence. But for something like electing representatives, you can't sort by surname strokes — you have to go by the number of votes received. Ranking may seem like a small thing, but if you jumble the order, some people will get upset, thinking you don't respect them. In the journal Ganlu (Sweet Dew), I don't arrange the names in the merit dedication section — say, the list of donors supporting the publication — in any particular order. People have told me to put the bigger donors first, or the earlier donors first, but I refuse. Say there are a hundred names in one issue — what a hassle it would be for me to arrange them by hand. I just feed them into the computer, add a sorting parameter, and the computer does it; the computer will never bump the bigger donors to the top. If there is a set order and it gets mixed up, someone will be unhappy — so I'd rather have no order at all. Then what are they going to complain about? There are actually many facets to sequence. Spiritual practice, for instance, has to follow a sequence, or it won't work. Meditative absorption (samādhi) has its own sequence too, and so on.

20. Direction. The directional divisions of where material dharmas are located. Shanghai is to the east, Guangzhou belongs to the south, Jilin is in the north, and the moon is above. East, south, north, above — all directions. These are merely provisional designations, set up by humans, with no real, fixed certainty. Guangdong is in the south, but compared with Hainan Island, it becomes the north.

21. Time. The past, present, future, spring, summer, morning, this year, yesterday — and so on. Time is a provisional label set up for the convenient expression of the continuity of cause and effect among dharmas; it too is a provisional designation, without self-nature. Relativity describes the phenomena of time dilation and length contraction: at high speeds, clocks run slower. Even in ordinary circumstances — right now, for instance — the time where we are isn't the same as the time in Paris or Moscow. Time is not fixed.

22. Number. Quantities like one, two, three, hundred, thousand, ten thousand — all set up provisionally to measure the individual distinctions among dharmas, and likewise not fixed. Take "1 + 1 = 2": that's base ten. But in the binary system computers use, 1 + 1 absolutely doesn't equal 2. And in the base-sixty system of clock faces, it's different again. All provisional designations. Master Ouyi says in his Direct Explanation of the Hundred Dharmas that numbers are "provisionally established on the basis of the sequential and relational qualities of the quantities of dharmas." Sequential means following along: each subsequent number arises by following from the previous one. Take the number two — it relies on and is based on one; it's just one plus another one. Or if I have ten yuan, the bills have to sit one after another; take any one away and it's no longer ten. Relational means comparison against a reference. This is much like the reference frame in physics. Zhang San is two years older than Li Si — that's the quantity "two" — but compared with Wang Ermazi, Zhang San is eight years younger, giving us the quantity "eight." You could also liken it to a coordinate system in mathematics. It's this sequential and relational character that gives rise to "number." That said, I don't agree with many of Master Ouyi's views on Consciousness-Only.

23. Conjunction. When dharmas blend together harmoniously — all conditions come together without conflict or opposition. No dharma arises in isolation; it must wait on conditions. For any dharma to come into being, all its conditions must be in conjunction. We call this quality of conditions coming together "conjunction." If you want to drink milk powder, the hot water and the powder need to have this conjunctive quality for you to actually drink it — water and milk blending into one.

24. Non-conjunction. When a certain dharma is trying to form but its causes and conditions are in conflict, so it can never come into being. I once had a misguided idea about mixing up some kind of oil solution: I poured oil into water, and no matter how hard I shook it, the two just wouldn't combine. This quality of conflicting conditions is called non-conjunction. A married couple who fights all the time and can't live together — that's non-conjunction too.