Types of Sounds

Form, sound, smell, taste, touch are divided into many kinds. The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra discussed this in its first volume: sounds are divided into several kinds, taste objects are also divided into several kinds, and it is the same with touch objects and smell objects. Mental objects, combined with the five kinds of sense objects, are likewise simultaneously divided into several kinds.

Among sounds, some are produced by the tathāgatagarbha within sentient beings themselves, some arise from the contact of the physical body with the external world, some are purely sounds from the external world, and some are produced through the mutual interaction of sentient beings. The sounds of sentient beings themselves are produced solely by their own tathāgatagarbha. The sounds produced within the body are also divided into several kinds: those produced by the mind consciousness's initial application and sustained examination (vitarka-vicāra) and deliberation, those produced in the process of food absorption and digestion, those produced by pathological changes in the internal organs, those produced by the manas regulating eating, chewing, and swallowing, those produced by gastrointestinal peristalsis, those produced by autonomous breathing, and those produced by the operation of the internal organs, such as the sound of the heartbeat.

No matter how these sounds are produced, when they fall into one's own ear faculty and are discerned by the ear consciousness and the mind consciousness, they are all sounds within the black box, not beyond the black box. They are all subject to arising, ceasing, and change, not lasting long; they are all empty, and all without self. It is the same with all the six sense objects we can come into contact with. Only when the mind is not turned by these object-states and does not fall into these object-states can there be freedom and liberation.

When the mind can avoid falling into the states of the six sense objects, it is able to leap outside of those states, transcend them, and not be confined within them; only then can one see the states clearly, and be lucid and undeluded. Among the states of the empty mind, there is one called "person present, states absent"—this is an empty state, but it is not an emptying of the mind or an emptying of the person. On this basis, one must further engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) to contemplate the mind and contemplate the person, in order to achieve the elimination of self-view (ahaṃkāra-mamakāra-parityāga). Merely emptying the states is not the elimination of self-view, for the subjective conscious mind, the "I," has not yet been emptied. Many people, in contemplating the five aggregates (pañcaskandha), inevitably have omissions and their contemplation is incomplete; they can only eliminate a part of the self, not the whole of the self. And this remaining part of the self will gradually again be taken as "I," and all merit is thereby lost.