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BUDDHISM
closes the blaze of the jewel is an effect of the discovery of the blaze of the jewel. The blaze, though absolutely pure, is expericnced with defilement, the defilement being, somehow, an effect of purity, a result of the bright cssence, a reflex of the blaze itself. The cliscussion is riddled with paradox. Nevertheless its main function is apparent enough; namely, to lift the mind from the physical and rational sphere and transfer it, in its contemplation, 10 the metaphysical.
In the light of this metaphysical emphasis all the terms shared with the Hīnayāna become transformed. Karma, for example, can no longer be regarded as solely, or even primarily, a function of the life-ignorance of the individual, representing the continuity of one specific causal chain, a santāna: an individual series, without beginning yet susceptible of termination; for karma now has assumed a cosmic aspect. Instead of an action being a "sced" (bija) which is to bear fruit, it itself is the fruit of a “secd” (bija) in the "repository consciousness.” Karma is this universal "seed" of which all action is the fruit; an imaginary sced, fertilizing as it were the unstained immaculate womb of the ālaya-vijñāna, causing it to bring forth imaginary individuals, imaginary universes--phenomenal phantasms, like the figures of a dream. These live and suffer under the illusion that they are living, suffering, and creating karma in the course of time, whereas actually they are themselves the reflexes of imaginary universal ideas sown in eternity. Karma, the real factor in all that we see, fecl, experience, and hear, is the apparent creator of the phenomenal world. Its seeds unfold in an endless harvest of individual consciousnesses, which arise, again and again, like grass from secd. The apparently separate chains of consciousness constitute the variety of this world and of the systems of worlds, yet all are rooted in the one repository. Hence life is governed by common laws. There are many lamps yet their light is one; many "streams of consciousness" (vijñānas) flowing forth from the alaya and returning (through release),
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