Black Box World (32)

The fragrant odors smelled along the way are also like this: the places experienced are different, and the odors emanating from each place are different. This shows that the external odor sense-object (gandha-viṣaya) is constantly undergoing transformation. The odor sense-object is transmitted through the nose faculty, enters the supreme faculty (indriya), and forms the inner odor sense-object, becoming an image inside the black box. Our nose consciousness and mind consciousness then smell the inner odor sense-object, transmitted over one odor after another; as the places we pass through differ, the odors transmitted differ, and the odors we smell (the odor sense-object) also differ. But the odor we feel is exactly the same as the external one, so we believe that what we smell is the external odor sense-object, and it seems so real—transmitted from such-and-such a place, from a restaurant, from flowers, from trees, from a certain person's body—as if all were real material odors. In fact, they are all the inner odor sense-object smells inside the black box.

When the mouth eats food, as the external taste sense-object changes, the inner taste sense-object felt by our tongue consciousness and mind consciousness also changes constantly, and so we believe we have eaten real food and tasted real flavors of sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy, feeling as if everything is real. In fact, these are all the inner taste sense-object inside the black box, all shadows. We feel the shadows are very real because they are identical to the external taste sense-object, and we cannot perceive their falseness.

The contact sense-object (sparśa-viṣaya) perceived by our body—the blowing of the breeze along the way, the shining of the warm sunlight, and contact sense-objects of other kinds—are all constantly changing, and what we feel is also the inner contact sense-object inside the black box. Because the external contact sense-object is constantly changing, as the sun moves it may become warmer and warmer, or the temperature may drop lower and lower, becoming cooler and cooler. In one place there is a light breeze, in another the wind is a bit stronger, and in yet another there is no wind at all. The hand may touch flowers, or touch trees, or touch some object—these external contact sense-objects are constantly changing.