The Black Box World (X)

For example, when the foot is injured, if the section of the transmission nerve at the back of the head that conducts the tactile objects of the body faculty is pinched off, the body consciousness will not feel pain. Even if the foot is completely severed, the body consciousness will not feel it and will not feel pain, and at that time there is no body consciousness present. Because the transmission nerve at the back of the head is severed, the external tactile object cannot be transmitted through the transmission nerve of the body faculty there, so the eighth consciousness cannot manifest the inner representation of the tactile object within the black box of the supreme faculty, and thus cannot produce the body consciousness and the mind consciousness to discern any condition of the foot. Since there is no body consciousness or mind consciousness, the tactile object there cannot be discerned, and therefore there is no sensation of pain in the foot.

One of the channels through which the tactile objects of the body faculty reach the supreme faculty is the area at the back of the neck. If this area is accidentally severed, the entire body will be paralyzed, the head will droop down, and the neck will no longer be able to straighten. If the supreme faculty at the back of the head is damaged, the channels of the external five sense objects will be cut off, the eighth consciousness will not be able to produce the corresponding inner representations, the five consciousnesses will not arise, and the five sense objects cannot be discerned; bodily and verbal actions can no longer be produced, and only the faint awareness of the mind consciousness remains, sustaining the existence of the living being—but perhaps not for long. If the external eye faculty is damaged, it cannot receive external material sense objects; if the inner eye faculty (that is, the supreme faculty of the eye) is damaged, the inner material sense object cannot be formed, and thus no eye consciousness will arise to discern the material sense object, and one cannot see forms. By the same token, the other faculties are also like this; therefore, what we discern are the inner representation images within the black box.

As long as a person is alive, the damage to the supreme faculty cannot be total; it can only be partial. If it were totally destroyed, the inner five faculties would all be unusable, and none of the five sense objects could be produced. In that case, not only would the five consciousnesses fail to arise, but the mind consciousness would also fail to arise and could not discern the mental sense objects upon the five sense objects. Then the manas would know that the five aggregates of the body can no longer be used, and He would certainly decide to leave the physical body and seek a new physical body for His own use. It is precisely because the supreme faculty is not completely destroyed and a portion remains usable that a person becomes a vegetative patient or a paralyzed patient.

If we carefully observe vegetative patients, we will find that their bodies can still exhibit some activities and have some sensations. Because of this, the manas considers that this body can still be made do with, and He will not leave the physical body. From beginningless kalpas, the manas has always craved the physical body; because of craving the physical body, He refuses to abandon it, and only when there is truly no other way will He let it go. These examples show that the six sense objects we discern are images within the black box of the supreme faculty—inner representations formed through the transmission of the external five sense objects via the transmission nerves—and are not real. However, merely knowing that they are not real is not enough; the habitual grasping of the manas is very difficult to change, and we need to cultivate the corresponding power of meditative concentration to gradually subdue the self-grasping nature of the manas.