Illusion in the Black Box — A Torch Turns into a Ring of Fire

When you see a burning match head, there is a feeling; if you shake the burning match head rapidly, forming a circle of fire, you will have another kind of feeling. When the perceived mark differs, the feeling will differ. Seeing a torch is one kind of feeling; shaking the torch rapidly to form a ring of fire makes this feeling more intense and more soul-stirring. No matter which kind of feeling it is, engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) upon it and dissect it profoundly, and you will know that it was all a false alarm, a delusive feeling—upon what basis? Being stirred into unrest by the fire in the mirror, being terrified out of one's wits by the peril on the screen—where is there any real event?

The burning match head as an external sense-object, no matter how rapidly it is shaken, is forever a single point, a single match head; it can never form a small ring of fire—just like a person running on a circular track: no matter how fast he runs, it is forever one person running; there will not be many identical people running around the track forming a circle. But if the viewer's eyesight has a problem and cannot keep up with the speed of the runner, a visual impediment will arise: the earlier figure has not yet vanished when the later figure appears, and as figure after figure keeps appearing in this way, he will see many people running around the track in a circle.

When the particles of the external match head enter the black box, likewise it is still a single match head. No matter how fast the external match head is shaken, at any one point in time and position there is only one inner sense-object match head in the black box; there will not be many match heads gathering into a circle. Then why is it that what the consciousness-mind sees is a ring of fire? This is the phenomenon of persistence of vision: the past image still remains in the consciousness-mind while new images keep appearing, and according to their sequential order it is as if one saw a ring of fire. Even seeing a single match head is an unreal seeing, an illusion—let alone seeing a small ring of fire formed by many match heads.