Selected Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (62)

Original text: 佛言大王。耳闻舍声。起于舍想。如人梦中。闻他宣说。不了义句。于意云何。是人觉已。忆念梦中。所闻之声。为实有不。王曰不也。

佛言大王。是人所梦。执以为实。是智者不。王曰。不也世尊。何以故。梦中毕竟。无有音声。何况更有。不了义句。当知是人。徒自疲劳。都无有实。

Explanation: The Buddha said: Great King, when sentient beings hear with the ear sounds that are neither wholesome nor unwholesome—neutral sounds detached from both extremes—they grasp them as real. It is like a person who, in a dream, hears someone else utter meaningless, incoherent phrases. Upon waking from the dream, he keeps recalling the words he heard in the dream. What do you think—are these things truly existent? King Śuddhodana said: They are not truly existent, World-Honored One.

The Buddha said: Great King, if this person takes his own dream to be real, is he a wise person? King Śuddhodana replied: This person has no wisdom, World-Honored One. Why? Because in a dream there are, after all, no sounds at all, let alone incoherent phrases. This person has indeed driven his mind to fatigue in vain, and there is nothing real in it at all.

The neutral mind is a state that is neither joyful nor distressed, abiding in the middle, detached from both extremes—neither craving nor aversion, neither good nor bad, neither painful nor pleasant. At this time the mind is calm without ripples, without highs and lows. For example, when you look at a person and feel nothing—neither liking nor disliking him—that is the neutral mind. If a mind of liking arises, then one experiences pleasant feeling; if one finds the person disagreeable, that is a painful feeling, with the mind of hatred arising. Thus feelings are of three kinds: painful feeling, pleasant feeling, and the neutral feeling that is neither painful nor pleasant.

As for neutral sounds, they refer to sounds that belong neither to the wholesome nor to the unwholesome, being in an intermediate state that is neither good nor bad. This person, in a dream, heard someone else utter incoherent, meaningless words; although he did not feel anything about them in his mind, he took them to be real things and kept recollecting them. Even if one clings to such a neutral state as truly existent and craves this neutral thought, not knowing that the six sense objects of neutrality are equally illusory, one is still not free from birth and death.

The "incoherent phrases" here are different from the "non-definitive sūtras" in the Buddhist scriptures; they are not the same meaning. Buddhist sūtras are divided into definitive sūtras and non-definitive sūtras. Definitive sūtras are true and expound the real dharma, whereas non-definitive sūtras do not expound the real dharma. Definitive sūtras teach the Mahāyāna scriptures' ultimate truth of the tathāgatagarbha dharma—this is called definitive, the fundamental dharma, the dharma of true reality. Other scriptures, those that do not expound the tathāgatagarbha dharma, are not definitive sūtras. Those that do not expound the dharma of our true mind, the tathāgatagarbha, are non-definitive, not fundamental scriptures. Of course, within definitive sūtras there are also non-definitive passages, and within non-definitive sūtras there are even more non-definitive passages.