The Illusion in the Black Box — A Torch Becomes a Ring of Fire

When you see a burning match head, there is a feeling; if you quickly shake the burning match head, forming a circle of fire, you will have another kind of feeling. When the perceived object differs, the feeling will differ. Seeing a torch is one kind of feeling; rapidly waving the torch to form a ring of fire makes this feeling more intense and more soul-stirring. No matter which kind of feeling it is, contemplate it (vipaśyanā-caryā) and analyze it profoundly, and you will know that it was, after all, a false alarm, a deluded feeling — on what basis does it stand? Being stirred into restlessness by the fire in a mirror, being terrified out of one's wits by the danger on a screen — where is there any real event?

The burning match head as an external sense-object, no matter how quickly it is shaken, remains 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 always one person running, and 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 impairment will occur: the previous 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, they are likewise a single match head; no matter how fast the external match head is shaken, at any single point in time and position within the black box there is only one inner sense-object match head, and there will not be many match heads gathering into a circle. Then why does the conscious mind see a ring of fire? This is the phenomenon of the persistence of vision: the past image still remains in the conscious 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 — how much more so seeing a small ring of fire formed by many match heads.