The World of Black Boxes (Part 41)

When we are knocked unconscious, our faculties of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and discerning cease to function. We cannot see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or discern, and thus cannot perceive all phenomena. Yet the flower remains there, visible to others. The sounds of wind and rain outside persist, audible to others. The fragrance of flowers outside can be smelled by others. Delicious food outside can be tasted by others. The warm sunshine outside can be felt by others. Others can perceive their own inner manifestations, whether in death, deep meditation, or sleep. When we look at a flower, the beautiful blossom has no intention to make us attached to it. It is our own seven consciousnesses that seek to differentiate it, think about it, judge it, admire it, and consequently generate feelings of liking or aversion. Similarly, the myriad phenomena of heaven and earth do not cause us to experience joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness. It is our own deluded mind that gives rise to attachments toward all things. Wine has no intention to intoxicate; it is the drinker who lacks the capacity for alcohol and becomes intoxicated by themselves.

External objects have no mind to delude us. When objects manifest in our minds, they are like shadows. It is our own seven consciousnesses that become active, insistently differentiating them, giving rise to various thoughts and emotions, causing our minds to become unsettled and generating afflictions by ourselves. These consciousnesses cannot exist unless the eighth consciousness provides them with the seeds of consciousness. Once the seeds are provided, the consciousnesses become active and lively, engaging in all kinds of differentiation, views, emotions, and producing various actions of body, speech, and mind. It is like a shadow play: when someone pulls the strings, the puppet performs. Similarly, these consciousnesses are utterly unreal. From this, we can see how illusory our conscious minds are, how illusory and unreal our five aggregates are—they merely stir about on the surface of the eighth consciousness. Therefore, when we perceive objects, the objects are illusory, and the perceiving is also illusory. There is no such thing as perceiving objects; it is merely diseased eyes seeing flowers in the sky. I advise my fellow beings to recognize truth from falsehood, cease deluded attachments, return to their true nature, and attain great liberation swiftly!