The Cult of Tara

98 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
reification of self
delusion of self
pride of self
love of self
underlying awareness-
—defiled mindsixperceptions-
external objects
living beings
self
sense-data
In this scheme it is the underlying awareness that appears externally
to be things and persons, or objects grasped; but these, again,
have no real existence apart from the fact of their perception by
the other seven awarenesses that appear internally to be a self and
sense-data, the subject who grasps them. This theory leads to a
certain lack of parsimony, for all four appearances arise from their
own seeds, which are contained within the underlying awareness;
Sthiramati must thus make at least a pedagogical distinction between
two sorts of underlying awareness: on one level as one of the eight
awarenesses, and on another level as including all eight within itself.
A further elaboration is found in another text by the same author
Maitreya and/or Asanga, called Adornment of the Sutras of the Great
Vehicle. Here we find the following verse [XI.40]:
The construction of a nonreality
appears in three kinds and again in three kinds
characterized as grasped and grasper . . .
Here appearances are expanded to six, as opposed to the four of the
first text. This rather casual reference to "three kinds of grasped"
and "three kinds of grasper" is commented upon by both Vasubandhu
and Sthiramati, who give slightly different terminologies for these
six appearances, with Vasubandhu again deriving them from the
primary bifurcation of a single awareness and Sthiramati seeing
them as manifestations of the eight:
Vasubandhu
ground
-grasped—• object
body—
mind—
-grasper—> percept
construct
-external object
-living being
-self-
-sense data-
Sthiramati
material world
six sense fields
-six senses
-defiled mind
five perceptions
mental perception
underlying
awareness
evolute
awarenesses
All these elaborations are simply more detailed accounts of the
same process: the construction of public nonreality as the dualists