The World of Black Boxes
Chapter 11 Material Form Inside the Black Box
I. All Kinds of Material Form Are Empty and Not-Self
Form, sound, smell, taste, and touch each divide into many kinds. The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, in its first volume, discussed this: sounds divide into several kinds, taste objects also divide into several kinds, and it is the same with touch objects and smell objects. Mental objects, combined with the five sense objects, also simultaneously divide into several kinds.
Some sounds are produced by the tathāgatagarbha within sentient beings themselves, some are produced by the contact of the physical body with the external world, some are purely external sounds, and some are sounds emitted when sentient beings interact with one another. The sounds of sentient beings themselves are produced solely by their own tathāgatagarbha. The sounds emitted from within the body also divide into several kinds: those produced by the initial application and sustained examination (vitarka-vicāra) and deliberation of the mind consciousness, those produced in the process of food absorption and digestion, those produced by pathological changes in the internal organs, those produced by the manas regulating eating, chewing, and swallowing, those produced by gastrointestinal peristalsis, those produced by autonomous breathing, and those produced by the operation of the internal organs, such as the sound of the heartbeat. No matter why these sounds arise, when they fall into one's own ear faculty and are discerned by the ear consciousness and mind consciousness, they are all sounds inside the black box, not outside it; they are all subject to arising, ceasing, and change, not long-lasting; they are all empty, and all not-self.
It is the same with all the six sense objects we can contact. Only when the mind is not turned by these object-conditions and does not fall into them is there freedom and liberation. When the mind does not fall into the realms of the six sense objects, it can leap outside those realms, transcend them, and not be confined within them; only then can one see the realms clearly, and the mind can be lucid and undeceived.
In the state of an empty mind, there is one kind called "person present but realm absent." This is an empty realm, but the mind and the person are not yet empty. On this basis, one must further engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the mind and on the person in order to eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa). Merely emptying the realm is not the eradication of the view of self, for the subjective conscious mind "I" has not yet been emptied. Many people's contemplative practice on the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) is incomplete; because the contemplation is not comprehensive, they can only eradicate a part of the self, not the whole self. And that remaining part of the self will gradually again be taken as "I," until in the end all merit is lost.
II. The Relationship Between the Image in the Mirror, the Mirror, and the Object Outside the Mirror
When looking into a mirror, what is the relationship between the reflection in the mirror and the mirror itself? The reflection does not overlay the mirror; it is not inside, outside, or in the middle of the mirror, and has no contact whatsoever with the mirror. The reflection is illusory, without real material form, and therefore has no contact with the mirror, does not overlay it, and does not obstruct it. What the six consciousnesses see are all unreal, illusory appearances, just like those conjured by a magician through his spells. The reflection in the mirror is the appearance of oneself seen by the eye consciousness, the sound of oneself heard by the ear consciousness, the smell of oneself smelled by the nose consciousness, the taste object in the mouth tasted by the tongue consciousness, the touch object within the body felt by the body consciousness, and the five aggregates with feeling discerned by the mind consciousness. This includes the decision-making nature of the seventh consciousness—all the actions of the seventh consciousness are illusory, unreal dharmas.
The seeing-nature of the five consciousnesses that the sixth consciousness can observe, the seeing-nature of the seventh consciousness, the seeing-nature of the mind consciousness itself, and the five aggregates with feeling and the six sense object realms observed by the mind consciousness are all reflections. The reflections are produced and manifested by the mirror; they are images transmitted by the mirror. The mirror truly exists forever without perishing, while the reflections arise and cease moment by moment; even while they exist, they are not truly existent—they are empty and illusory.
What is the relationship between the image in the mirror and the object outside the mirror? The image and the object correspond one-to-one, similar and alike. The image is transformed from the object, comes from the object, and exists dependent on the object; the two are neither identical nor different, having both similar and dissimilar parts. The image within cannot exist apart from the object outside—without the object there is no image—and it resembles the object outside. However, the object outside is composed of real seeds of the four great elements and has the real function of the four great elements, whereas the image within has no real seeds of the four great elements and no real function. For one who is awakened and possesses meditative concentration (samādhi), the image in the mirror is like a turtle's hair or a rabbit's horns, utterly without function.
III. The Image in the Mirror of the Tathāgatagarbha Is Also Material Form
All dharmas divide into material form, mind, and neither-material-nor-mind. Material form is composed of seeds of the four great elements and is the material appearance seen by mind. The image in the mirror seen by the conscious mind is also material form, composed of a portion of the seeds of the four great elements, only its compositional structure differs from the material form outside the mirror. Mind is the discriminating mind; the image in the mirror cannot discriminate, and therefore is not mind.
The object outside the mirror is jointly manifested by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings with shared karma, while the image on the mirror is manifested by an individual sentient being's tathāgatagarbha in dependence on the external object. The object outside the mirror is false, and the image on the mirror is even more false. At various levels, the particles composed of the four great elements differ, resulting in different degrees of reality. Everything of our own physical body that we see is like the image on the mirror. Is it existent or nonexistent? Neither existent nor nonexistent? Or neither neither-existent-nor-nonexistent?
IV. The Four Great Elements of the Physical Body and of the Inanimate World Are the Same
In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra—no, in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Buddha said that the fine dust of the physical body and the fine dust of the inanimate world are not two and not different; they are composed of the same seeds of the four great elements. For example, the garbage and waste expelled daily from the body through blood vessels and skin is exactly the same as the sand and soil of the inanimate world; the sweat expelled is exactly the same as the water of nature; the breath exhaled from the mouth, nose, and skin is exactly the same as the wind of the inanimate world; and the heat emitted by the body is exactly the same as the fire of the inanimate world. Therefore the seeds of the four great elements composing material form are the same; the body and the inanimate world are not two and not different. When the external four great elements change, the body changes accordingly.
V. Can Information Temporarily Remain Stored in the Brain?
All material form is subject to momentary arising, ceasing, and change; it does not remain unchanged. The brain itself is also arising, ceasing, and changing; it is not motionless, forever in one state. The material form in contact with the brain is likewise arising, ceasing, and changing, and cannot remain stored in the brain. Otherwise, since the brain's capacity is limited, material form would burst the brain apart, and a person would become an invalid or a corpse.
Information belongs to mental objects, discriminated and processed by the mind consciousness, including the semblance-investigated realm (似带质境) and the subjectively imagined realm; it arises, ceases, and changes moment by moment and cannot endure long, and therefore cannot remain stored in the brain. All information can only be retained as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha and released again when conditions ripen. If the brain could preserve information, then by slicing open the brain of a living or dead person piece by piece, one could find this information, understand and study it, and reveal all of a person's secrets. Then worldly people would have no secrets, and criminal investigation would be far too easy—no mystery would remain unsolved, and there would be no millennium-old unsolved cases or wrongful convictions. If a computer could store information, would taking the computer apart reveal the information? If a mobile phone could store information, would taking the phone apart allow one to find the information?
Information belongs to mental objects, discriminated and processed by the mind consciousness, including form included in the mental object base (dharmāyatana) and the subjectively imagined realm; it is composed of seeds, and only the tathāgatagarbha contains seeds—the brain contains no seeds—and therefore cannot store information. Moreover, the brain's capacity could not hold it. Therefore information should be stored in the tathāgatagarbha and comes from the tathāgatagarbha. If information does not belong to material form, is not composed of the four great elements, then it is a seed-state without form or appearance, and must be stored in the tathāgatagarbha; the brain cannot store seeds.
Footprints on walls and on the ground belong to material form of the four great elements; they are tangible sense object realms of the five dusts, which the eyes can of course see. The intangible information displayed on the footprints is a mental object discriminated by the mind consciousness, and also belongs to information. After a person discerns it, seeds are stored in the tathāgatagarbha, not in the brain. Although the brain afterward deliberates back and forth, that is the mind consciousness—the reaction is extremely swift, with no opportunity for the mind consciousness's analysis, deliberation, inference, or judgment. The mind consciousness and the five consciousnesses need only obey the manas's deployment and commands, responding without needing to judge for themselves; only afterward is there time to think, analyze, infer, and judge, knowing what one just did and what happened. This is the reason the manas can respond rapidly to sudden events.
(3) The nature realm: when the investigated realm passes through the five gross faculties into the supreme faculty, the six sense object realms manifested within the supreme faculty become the nature realm, similar to the investigated realm—hence called the nature realm—yet with a certain difference from the investigated realm. During transmission, the investigated realm must pass through the filtering of the five faculties; the particles of the four great elements may undergo certain changes, making the nature realm even more subtle, and even more unreal and illusory.
(4) The subjectively imagined realm differs greatly from the nature realm, even more from the investigated realm, and vastly from the essential realm—perhaps having no connection with the essential realm at all. It is initiated by the manas's grasping, arising from nothing; the mind consciousness processes and refines the manas's daydream, sketching and adding details, employing non-valid cognition and imagination to exercise more delicate functions of daydreaming, even making the imagined realm vivid and lifelike. The five consciousnesses cannot participate in this part; it is accomplished entirely by the mind consciousness cooperating with the manas. The mind consciousness at this time is called the solitary consciousness, doing the daydreaming work alone, sketching out scenes.
The external six entrances and external six objects refer to the six sense object aspects outside the supreme faculty, not yet entered into it; these should refer to the investigated realm and the essential realm, contacted by the manas; the six consciousnesses cannot contact them, much less see them. What the six consciousnesses cannot discern does not belong to the internal object-aspect and should be counted as the six sense objects outside the supreme faculty, called the external six objects.
The internal six objects refer to the nature realm within the supreme faculty, which not only the manas but also the six consciousnesses can contact and see. Of course the eighth consciousness can all the more contact and see them: all dharmas, at whatever stage, are manifested and upheld by the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, which of course can contact and see them; otherwise no dharma whatsoever could arise and exist.
XII. The Differences and Connections Among the Essential Realm, the External Six Objects, and the Internal Six Objects
The external six objects existing in the universe are jointly produced and jointly upheld by the tathāgatagarbhas of all sentient beings, maintained by all tathāgatagarbhas using the seeds of the four great elements. The seeds of the four great elements arise moment by moment and cease moment by moment, so the external six objects arise and cease moment by moment. The external six object realms are the most primordial material form, a relatively substantial material form composed of real seeds; strictly speaking, it is called the essential realm, discerned by the tathāgatagarbha—the manas cannot discern it, and the six consciousnesses even less so. Even so, the essential realm is also arising, ceasing, and changing moment by moment. In the process of arising, ceasing, and change of the seeds of the four great elements, the seeds radiate outward, radiating back into the various tathāgatagarbhas; that is why we can sense magnetic fields and energy around matter.
The tathāgatagarbha absorbs back the radiated seeds of the four great elements; only after absorption are they called the external six objects. The tathāgatagarbha then transmits the seeds of the four great elements upon the external six objects through the five faculties into the supreme faculty. The five faculties refer to the body's various nervous systems; for example, the eye faculty has the vitreous body and a neural transmission system, which transmits the particles of the four great elements radiated by matter outside the eye faculty all the way into the supreme faculty of the eye at the back of the brain, where the inner material sense-object (inner rūpa-viṣaya) is formed. When the inner material sense-object lands in the eye's supreme faculty, faculty and object make contact.
In fact, both the external and inner material sense-objects are first discerned by the manas. After discerning the inner material sense-object, if the manas wishes to know it in detail, it gives birth to the eye consciousness and mind consciousness; if the manas does not wish to know it in detail, we do not know of such a material sense-object. The mental objects together with the five sense objects are transmitted simultaneously with them: the form mental object is transmitted through the eye faculty together with the form object, the sound mental object is transmitted through the ear faculty together with the sound object, the smell mental object is transmitted through the nose faculty together with the smell object, and it is the same with the taste and touch mental objects.
This means that there are many dharmas within the supreme faculty; when the manas does not wish to discern them, the six consciousnesses cannot discern them, and we do not know the dharmas transmitted in through the five faculties. If the nervous system's transmission has no obstruction or error, the formed internal six objects will somewhat resemble the external six objects, or even closely resemble them, because the internal six objects are the reflection of the external six objects; and the external six objects are the reflection of the essential realm, like the reflection in a mirror. The internal six objects we discriminate are like the reflection in the mirror; the external six objects we cannot discriminate are equivalent to the real object outside the mirror—that real object is somewhat more real than the internal six objects, more closely matching the original six sense objects of the essential realm. The essential realm is composed of real four great elements, which the manas cannot contact. Only when the tathāgatagarbha, like a mirror, absorbs the four great elements of that essential realm and conjures them forth can the manas contact them.
XIII. The Categories and Substance of the Subjectively Imagined Realm
The subjectively imagined realms corresponding to the solitary consciousness divide into essenceless subjectively imagined realms and essence-bearing subjectively imagined realms. The essenceless subjectively imagined realm is a realm imagined by the mind consciousness, having no substance whatsoever, nonexistent in reality and before one's eyes, like sky-flowers or rabbit's horns, carrying not a bit of substance. Therefore some people are very fond of daydreaming out of thin air, indulging in wild fantasies, so that the spirit has something to rest on, relieving mental fatigue and avoiding boredom and stupor. Such as recollecting the past and fantasizing about the future—unfettered and boundless, without any limits. Such fantasized subjectively imagined realms, because they consume little energy and require no meditative concentration, have relatively little effect on the brain, manifest relatively often, and carry no particular constraint.
The essence-bearing subjectively imagined realm is a realm discriminated solely by the mind consciousness that has some connection with the five sense objects, carrying a bit of the essence of the four great elements upon the five sense objects; the mind consciousness elaborates imagination upon the basis of the five sense object realms, or misinterprets them. For example, seeing a rope as a snake: the rope is a material sense-object of the nature realm; the mind consciousness should have discerned the shape of a rope on the basis of the nature realm and uttered the name "rope," but instead it misinterprets, judging the rope to be a snake, producing the image and name of a snake, even crying out in fright. The snake is the subjectively imagined realm; the five consciousnesses do not participate in discerning and distinguishing it, yet the snake image does not appear separately from the material sense-object realm; therefore it is an essence-bearing subjectively imagined realm.
Another example: seeing a flower, the mind consciousness processes and imagines it—imagining its appearance before blooming, its appearance after opening, or imagining it larger or smaller, changing its colors and variety, or imagining extra branches and leaves, or imagining many more of the same flowers gathered into a bouquet. Another example: seeing a book, one simultaneously associates it with another book, or with another kind of book cover, or with another title of the book, and so on.
Therefore, the realms we encounter, the realms appearing in our heads, and whatever we think and contemplate—where is there any real dharma, any true and unchanging nature? It is purely the mind's ignorance and boredom producing all sorts of superfluous affairs, adding vexation and agitation, preventing one's own mind from stillness and tranquility (praśama). Because of ignorance, sentient beings do not know the joy of tranquility; with nothing to do they seek affairs, stirring up trouble from nothing, with deeply entrenched habit energies, severely obstructing the arising of meditative concentration (samādhi).
XIV. Does the Subjectively Imagined Realm Have Seeds?
(1) The visual and auditory hallucinations of people with brain atrophy belong to the essenceless subjectively imagined realm, which others cannot discern. If others could also discern one's subjectively imagined realm, then what one discerns would not be a subjectively imagined realm, and the person with brain atrophy would not be ill—it would not be a hallucination. A person who does not exist at all, he can see, while others cannot; a sound that does not exist at all, he can hear, while others cannot. The form and sound he contacts arise from nothing, wind from an empty cave. For example, a person with cerebellar atrophy clearly sees person A but takes them for person B; B is an essence-bearing subjectively imagined realm, carrying a certain essence of A—B does not exist apart from A; without A there is no B.
Does such a subjectively imagined realm have seeds? Brain atrophy is karmic retribution and has karmic seeds; when the karmic seeds mature, the retributive result of brain atrophy appears, which is also suffering—not only is the spirit tormented, the body is tormented too. After fantasizing for a long time, one becomes extremely fatigued, and sedative-type drugs are used to control it. Thus the subjectively imagined realm consumes brain cells and brain energy. The mental object of the subjectively imagined realm does not require the tathāgatagarbha to output seeds of the four great elements from its mind-essence to form it, but it does require a certain amount of particles of the four great elements in the brain's nerve cells. Beings without a supreme faculty do not exhibit brain atrophy and need not consume brain cells and brain energy.
(2) The deranged consciousness of the mentally ill is also a scattered solitary consciousness, and what it discerns is also a subjectively imagined realm; they feel that everything they see and hear is normal, no different from others. But others cannot discern what the mentally ill person sees, hears, and feels—that is the subjectively imagined realm. If what the mentally ill person sees could also be seen by others, it would not be a subjectively imagined realm, and he would not be a special mental patient but the same as a normal person. That what sentient beings see differs from what the Buddha sees shows that sentient beings are ill and the Buddha is not ill.
The manas corresponds with karmic seeds and with karmic retribution. When karmic retribution manifests, the manas is in a pathological state, the mind consciousness thinks wildly, and the tathāgatagarbha follows conditions to manifest karma, conjuring forth the realms imagined by the deranged manas and mind consciousness; thus, in the eyes of others, the mentally ill person appears deranged and abnormal. As for the essence-bearing subjectively imagined realm, the tathāgatagarbha, based on existing object realms, takes a portion of the four great elements and conjures forth another subjectively imagined realm, seemingly unrelated to the existing realm. After the mind consciousness apprehends it and takes it as real, others see this person as deranged and abnormal. The root of the illness lies in the manas, in the karmic actions of past lives; the retributive result received in this life is illusory and false.
(3) Ordinary unenlightened people are not much different from those with brain atrophy or the mentally ill: everything they see is also unreal and insubstantial, brought about by karmic power, arising from nothing, like wind from an empty cave. They do not see the true dharma, yet upon the true dharma they falsely see the illusory investigated realm, subjectively imagined realm, and nature realm. These realms all carry the essence of the tathāgatagarbha, the truth of the tathāgatagarbha, the fundament of the tathāgatagarbha—yet they do not know it, seeing only the false and the illusory; they are truly inverted and deluded.
The root of the illness lies in the manas, summoned by the karmic power of ignorance. When karma is dissolved and the illness recedes, what is seen is restored, and one will see the true and the real; the false appearances vanish and the illusory appearances withdraw, and with the mind free of illness there is naturally coolness and clarity. In all this, who is not an ill person?
