Why Are There More Fish in the Monitor than Actual Fish?

Zhu Qingshi said: Our world is like this large fish tank, with a goldfish swimming inside. Suppose there are at least two video cameras, one observing the tank from the side, and one observing the tank from behind, and in another room there are two monitors. Imagine a person entering the room with the monitors—he would see two fish in the tank, and the two fish would not be identical, because one image is shot from the tail end and the other from the side. These two fish are strange: no matter what movement one of them makes, the other immediately responds, and both are simultaneous.

The monitors are equivalent to the black box, and the person is equivalent to the six consciousnesses. The six consciousnesses perceiving the realms of the six sense objects within the black box is like a person watching the images on the monitors. The monitors are monitoring a single fish in the fish tank in another room; clearly there is only one fish in the tank, so why can two different fish be seen on the monitors? Because the two cameras film this fish from different angles, the images captured are different, as if there were two fish, and so two fish would be seen on the monitors.

The monitors are equivalent to the black box; everything in the black box consists of illusory false appearances resembling the outside world, but they are not necessarily entirely similar—there may be great errors. The six consciousnesses do not know this, and still believe they have seen the real appearances; this misapprehension could be enormous. If ten cameras were placed at different positions in the room, ten fish would be captured; if one hundred cameras were placed, one hundred fish would be captured, and from the monitors one would see ten or a hundred different fish. When a certain number is reached, these fish from different angles, combined together, constitute one complete fish. When the Buddha taught about setting up the Śūraṅgama mandala in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, placing an eight-faceted mirror in the practice site, this was precisely this principle.