The Illness in the Black Box

So-called illness is the disharmony of the four great elements—the earth, water, fire, and wind being out of balance—where the physical structure has changed, causing changes in the basic particles of the material body, giving rise to pathological changes in the five gross physical sense organs such as the body faculty, possibly including pathological changes in the five supreme faculties, and also possibly including pathological changes in the inner representations of the five faculties within the black box. The pathological changes perceived by sentient beings' six consciousnesses are all pathological changes within the black box, never beyond the black box; therefore they are false illnesses, illusory illnesses, not real illnesses. For example, when you feel eye pain, it is not the eyes on the face—the gross physical sense organs—that hurt; rather, you feel the pain of the image of the eyes within the black box. How could a mere image feel pain or not feel pain? It is all just bioelectric signals. Likewise, the feeling of muscle pain or bone pain is not the pain of the body as a gross physical sense organ; it is all the feeling of bioelectric signals within the black box. What is there to hurt about bioelectric signals? What is there to hurt about images? It is merely illusion.

Even the feeling of a headache is just a false headache composed of bioelectric signals within the black box—where is there any real pain? The head on your shoulders does not hurt at all. The feelings of the six consciousnesses are all unreliable, because they are all awareness of illusory and false appearances, all awareness of the bioelectric signals within the black box. What is aware of is nothing but unpredictable virtual scenarios, so what reality is there in the feeling that arises after that awareness? What difference is there between feeling and not feeling? Whatever you do toward these illusory, false appearances, doing or not doing is all emptiness. Whether aware or unaware, feeling or not feeling, the dharmas are as they inherently are; it only adds to one's own bondage of birth and death—apart from that, what else is there?

When one is ill, the five faculties do not hurt, the six sense objects do not hurt—do the six consciousnesses hurt? What is there for the six consciousnesses to hurt about, since they have no nature of sense objects? Birth and death is the great illness, and everyone is gravely ill and needs treatment.