The Illness in the Black Box

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

Even the feeling of a headache is a false headache within the black box, composed of electrical current signals — what real pain is there? The head on your shoulders does not hurt. The feelings of the six consciousnesses are all unreliable, because they are all awareness of illusory and false appearances, all awareness of the electrical signals within the black box; what is being perceived is ever-changing 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 conjured false appearances, doing or not doing is empty; aware or unaware, feeling or not feeling — the dharmas are inherently thus; it only adds to one's own bondage of birth and death, and 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; sentient beings are gravely ill and need treatment — treating it with the Four Noble Truths of suffering, its origin, cessation, and the path is the most effective.