The Black Box World (43)

The six faculties are divided into inner faculties and outer faculties, and into faculties with form and faculties without form. The first five faculties are faculties with form—material sense faculties with appearance, constituted by the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind. The manas is a formless faculty, not constituted by the four great seeds, not belonging to material form; He is mind, is consciousness, possessing the mind's functions of discrimination and recognition. The five faculties include both the gross physical sense organs and the supreme faculties. The gross physical sense organs are the outer faculties, floating on the surface of the body, visible to others. The supreme faculties are the inner faculties, located at the back of the head, invisible to others but visible to the divine eye. When the five faculties are emphasized as the surface, they refer to the gross physical sense organs, not including the supreme faculties. If one speaks of all the functional natures of the five faculties, then the supreme faculties are included. There are also cases where the emphasis is placed specifically on the supreme faculties, depending on the specific situation. The back of the head is where the supreme faculties are located, responsible for contacting the inner sense-objects, after which the tathāgatagarbha produces consciousness.

When the six faculties contact the six sense-objects, the tathāgatagarbha produces the six consciousnesses. When the three—faculty, sense-object, and consciousness—converge in contact, the six consciousnesses discern the inner six sense-objects, and sentient beings thereby know the content of the inner six sense-objects, and the discriminating knowing is completed. What sentient beings discern is the inner sense-objects, the inner representations, not the outer sense-objects, the outer representations; therefore the six sense-objects that sentient beings discern are illusory. The inner sense-objects are illusory; the outer sense-objects, relative to the inner ones, seem real, but they are also conjured forth by the tathāgatagarbha, and are likewise illusory and unreal. What is truly real is the unborn and unceasing true mind, the tathāgatagarbha; apart from this, everything is false, all is illusory, conjured and unreal.

Sentient beings can never come into contact with the outer sense-objects; they all exist within illusory appearances, false appearances—merely diseased eyes gazing at flowers in the sky. Do the inner sense-objects and outer sense-objects exist or not? When sentient beings' eyes are diseased, they can see flowers in the sky; when sentient beings' mind-eye is obstructed by disease, they will see all appearances as real and true. When sentient beings' minds are free of disease, they no longer see flowers in the sky, but only see the nature of the tathāgatagarbha. For example, our five aggregates have movement and activity; these false appearances are not excluded—they exist, but this existence is false existence. These dharmas may not be experientially realized at present, but after attaining enlightenment, when various contemplative wisdoms arise, one will then be able to understand. This is a personally realized realm of direct perception; no matter how others explain it, one cannot experientially realize it, because this is not a matter of intellectual understanding—it must be personally verified through actual practice. What is merely understood is unreliable and cannot resolve the problem of birth and death.