Death in the Black Box

After old age and illness, the four great elements fall into severe disharmony, and when they can no longer be reconciled, the body becomes unusable. How is it unusable? The functions of the five gross physical sense organs of the body age and can no longer properly receive and transmit the outer six sense-objects; the neural conduction system ages and can no longer properly receive and conduct the bioelectric signals coming from the five gross physical sense organs; the brain and the black box of the supreme faculty age and become rigid, unable to properly receive the bioelectric signals conducted by the nervous system, and thus cannot integrate these signals to form the virtual inner representation of the six inner sense-objects that resembles the outer representation.

When there are no six inner sense-objects in the supreme faculty, the conditions for the arising of the six consciousnesses are not complete, and the six consciousnesses cannot arise to discern the six inner sense-objects. Sentient beings then lose the function of awareness. The manas loses its right-hand and left-hand assistants and becomes powerless with regard to all dharmas; it will then decide to leave the body, and thus death occurs and it enters the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava).

Once the black box is no longer functional, the faculties and objects do not make contact, the six consciousnesses cannot manifest, bodily, verbal, and mental actions cannot appear, and the activities of the five-aggregate body come to an end. When the manas feels it can do nothing, the five-aggregate body will inevitably die. It can be seen that the black box of the supreme faculty is extremely important: even if the five gross physical sense organs are perfectly normal and the conducting nerves are also perfectly normal, if the black box is abnormal, the manas cannot be aware of the six sense-object realms, and it will helplessly choose death—in fact, it is being destroyed rather than choosing.

Why is the black box so important? It is because the black box is a venue—the venue where the six faculties, six sense-objects, and six consciousnesses converge, the venue where the five aggregates are active. It is here that the inner representation of the great thousand worlds can be generated, and here that the six consciousnesses can be generated; the six consciousnesses can contact and discern the virtual great thousand worlds, having cognition, being able to feel and experience, and being able to enjoy and make use of the virtual six sense-object realms—in common parlance, this is called being alive, or called living. Once one can no longer be alive, or can no longer live, the manas will inevitably go searching anew for a place where it can be alive, and begin a new life.