Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (176)

Form does not delude people; people delude themselves. Once ignorance is removed, all dharmas become clear.

If we carefully contemplate the illusory nature of our own mind consciousness, and attentively observe the arising, ceasing, and illusory nature of all worldly phenomena, the mind will reduce its grasping and clinging, with fewer fantasies and random thoughts. Then people's mental illnesses will decrease, nervous exhaustion and insomnia will be alleviated, and all kinds of ailments will be reduced. Where do illnesses come from? One source is the karmic retribution of actions from past lives; the other is that they are conjured up by afflictions and deluded thoughts in this present life. Sentient beings always seek out suffering for themselves. When the principles are understood, the mind has no afflictions; when the principles are not understood, afflictions abound and suffering is immeasurable—all self-inflicted, given by no one else. All illnesses are illusory and conjured; they have no place of origin, and when they cease, they have no place of cessation, because they are illusory. Once these principles are thoroughly understood, one can cure a hundred illnesses—no need for any physician of the body or physician of the mind; all disease-obstacles arise illusorily and cease illusorily. Once the Buddha-dharma is understood, all dharmas are understood. If one studies the Buddha-dharma well, all worldly dharmas will be fully understood.

The bodily illnesses of worldly people, their psychological illnesses, all the afflictions within the family, the troubles of work and career—all such things are the result of being entangled by one's own ignorance and karmic obstructions. Those who have not studied Buddhism do not understand these principles; those who have studied Buddhism but have not yet studied it thoroughly, who have not engaged in deep and detailed contemplation and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), are still obscured by their own ignorance. To truly understand the truths of the world, one must first understand oneself; thereafter, all dharmas will become clear. Therefore, when worldly dharmas are not understood, it is because the mind has knots and bonds; what needs to be untied is one's own mental knots, not the resolution of external circumstances.

We should not complain that the external material sense-objects are so vexing, insisting on coming to disturb our minds. Rather, we should reflect on why our minds are attracted by external forms and seized by them. Why must we stick to external objects? Is it that external objects want to bind us and stick to us? No—it is that our own minds insist on grasping at them or rejecting them, and as a result we are stuck to the sense-objects. We originally wanted to grasp at the objects, but instead we were seized by them. The five desires and six sense-objects have bound us to suffer poverty and the suffering of saṃsāra life after life; thus we are bound by all dharmas within the six paths of rebirth, bound within this ocean of afflictions and birth-and-death.