Black Box World (30)

Why is it that all the six sense objects we can know are images inside the black box? Some people, upon encountering the issue of the inner object-aspect, cannot believe that everything they contact and discern—all dharmas—are images of the inner object-aspect inside the black box. They believe that everything they see is so real and reliable that it cannot possibly be images. This is because these images are extremely similar to the outer object-aspect, almost identical, so each person feels that their walking, standing, sitting, lying down, eating, drinking, and bodily functions are all so real and actual. They feel that when seeing forms and hearing sounds, what they see are the external scenes, what they hear are the external sounds, what they feel is the external sunlight, and they do not understand how all of this could be images. How could it be false?

When reading the Diamond Sutra, where the Buddha says "All marks are false and illusory," everyone can believe and accept it, and can even recite it fluently from memory. But if one analyzes it concretely and says that these six sense objects are all images inside the black box, and therefore are all illusory, then people cannot understand and accept it. When the explanation becomes too concrete and one has to face the actual problem, it becomes very difficult. When reciting the Buddha's words, one need not understand and contemplate them concretely, need not truly face these problems, and since it is the Buddha's words, people will parrot them in recitation—actually without understanding their meaning.

Because for beginningless kalpas we have been accustomed to clinging to marks, accustomed to inversion, and this has long become habitual; such views are hard to correct in a short time, and hard to reverse from the inversion. It requires slowly changing one's cognition and slowly returning to correct views. Now let us take concrete examples again for contemplation and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), using the concrete to contemplate that all the six sense object realms we contact are images inside the black box.

For example, there is such a question. Someone asks: "From place A to place B, everything I experienced along the way—what I saw, heard, felt, and knew—was clearly so real. Places A and B were also so real. Whether sitting in a car, on a plane, or walking, everything was so real. How could it all be images inside the black box?"

Let us first talk about walking. When walking, all the realm-marks contacted by the six consciousnesses are the six sense object realms inside the black box. First, because we walk on two legs, the physical body keeps moving, so all the realms contacted by the six consciousnesses are constantly changing. During the process of walking, the scenery of the outer object-aspect keeps changing, and this change includes all changes in the six sense objects: changes in the scenery of form objects, changes in the sounds of sound objects, changes in the smells of odor objects, changes in the sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors of taste objects, as well as changes in the cold, heat, touch, and pain of tactile objects, and also various changes in thoughts and mental ideas in the mind.

The various scenes we experience are constantly changing, but our eye consciousness simply cannot contact the real external scenery. Even so, we see all kinds of constantly changing scenery, and thus assume it is the external scenery that is constantly changing. In fact, the external scenery is indeed constantly changing, because the physical body is constantly moving, the places contacted are constantly changing, and so the scenery keeps changing; consequently, the inner scenery that depends on the external scenery—that is, the images—must also constantly change.

But why can the body walk from place A to place B, why can the places contacted constantly change, why must the scenery constantly change—here we touch upon the secret of the operation of the tathāgatagarbha, and please forgive me for not disclosing it. Because the scenery of the external form object keeps changing, the tathāgatagarbha, through the eye faculty, takes in the subtle particles of various form objects and transmits them into the black box, where it manifests the images of the inner object-aspect. Thus, the images change moment by moment, yet what our eye consciousness sees is changing only little by little, not very quickly.