Death in the Black Box

After old age and illness, when the four great elements fall into severe disorder and can no longer be harmonized, the body becomes unusable. How does it become unusable? The functions of the five gross sense faculties age and can no longer normally receive and transmit the six external sense objects; the neural conduction system ages and can no longer normally receive and transmit the electrical signals coming from the five gross sense faculties; the brain and the black box of the supreme faculty (indriya) age and become rigid, unable to normally receive the electrical signals transmitted by the nervous system, and thus cannot integrate these electrical signals to form the inner six sense objects—an inner object-aspect (nimitta) resembling the external object-aspect.

When there are no inner six sense objects within the supreme faculty, the conditions for the arising of the six consciousnesses are incomplete, and the six consciousnesses cannot arise to perceive the inner six sense objects. Sentient beings then lose the function of awareness. The manas loses its right-hand and left-hand assistants and becomes powerless with respect to all dharmas; it will decide to leave the body, and thus death occurs and it enters the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava).

Once the black box is no longer functional, faculties and objects do not make contact, the six consciousnesses cannot manifest, bodily, verbal, and mental actions cannot occur, and the activities of the five-aggregate body will cease. When the manas feels it can do nothing, the five-aggregate body will inevitably die. It can be seen that the black box of the supreme faculty is extremely important: even if the five gross sense faculties are perfectly normal and the conducting nerves are also perfectly normal, if the black box is abnormal, the manas cannot be aware of the realms of the six sense objects, and it will helplessly choose death—in fact, it is being destroyed rather than choosing.

Why is the black box so important? It is because the black box is a place—a place where the six faculties, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses converge, a place where the five aggregates are active. Here the inner object-aspect of the great thousand worlds can be generated, the six consciousnesses can be generated, and the six consciousnesses can contact and perceive the virtual great thousand worlds—there is cognition, there can be awareness and feeling, and one can experience and enjoy the virtual realms of the six sense objects. In common parlance, this is called being alive, or called living. Once one can no longer be alive, or can no longer live, the manas will inevitably go searching anew for a place where it can be alive, and begin a new life.