Contemplative Practice (Vipaśyanā-caryā) on the Process of Applying the Mind to the Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Ru Chun: My practice during this period has mainly been contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), and I have gained somewhat more insight into suffering and impermanence. On New Year's Day I happened to come across the "Song of Everlasting Sorrow." At the time I only felt that there was suffering and impermanence in this story, and I didn't think much about it, because I felt I shouldn't be distracted by contemplating worldly matters, so I let it go. But my manas unknowingly developed an interest in it; images seemed to drift through my mind involuntarily, and then I would begin to space out. In the instant of spacing out, it felt like the moment iron is drawn to a magnet—as if two forces, the manas and the mind consciousness, were pressed tightly together. During that period of spacing out, it was as if They were very attentively and tacitly transmitting, receiving, and interpreting information; once the exchange of information was complete, Their mutual intent was understood, and I came back to my senses, and the two consciousnesses separated again.

Comment: Spacing out is thinking, pondering—pondering the suffering and impermanence contained in the poem. Who is doing the pondering? It is the manas and the mind consciousness, or one of them. If in the thinking there is an inner voice with verbal content, it is the mind consciousness thinking; if the thinking is deeper, without inner voice or words, with the content vague and indistinctly discerned, it is the manas thinking. For most people, most of the time, the two think together, with the mind consciousness contributing the greater share of the thinking. If the manas is unfamiliar with the poem's content while the mind consciousness is very familiar with it, then at the start of thinking, the mind consciousness transmits the meaning it has discerned to the manas. The details of how They cooperate cannot generally be observed by ordinary people, who cannot distinguish them clearly.

Ru Chun: Afterwards, the six consciousnesses then cooperated to look into the specific content of the story and related materials, and fed this back to the manas. When They were working together in such close coordination, it felt as if my brain was full of related images and information flying about, impossible to shake off. At first it felt very chaotic and murky, and I couldn't make out what it meant; after a while it would automatically become clear and intelligible—that is, the mind consciousness understood the manas's meaning.

When the mind consciousness attends to one thing, it cannot attend to another. Sitting in meditation, reading sutras, doing housework—no matter what I did, I could not concentrate; my mind kept wandering, and even when talking with people I was careless and perfunctory. For several days I could not focus on anything, and I deeply felt the domineering nature and attachment of the manas: when He resolves to do something, He bites down and will not let go, clinging to the six consciousnesses so that they have no choice but to cooperate and first fulfill His will; otherwise you cannot hope to do anything else well.

Comment: The images appearing in the mind are produced by the manas. After He learns the story's content from the mind consciousness, He flashes up images according to His understanding while understanding it; there are also thoughts flashing back and forth, only the mind consciousness is not quite clear what those thoughts are. Once the manas becomes interested in this matter, He impels the mind consciousness to cooperate with His thinking anytime and anywhere; when the mind consciousness is distracted, things cannot be done well.

Ru Chun: So this morning I began conceiving the piece in my mind while busy with tasks, and at noon I began writing, writing until after 3 p.m. I wrote very slowly, and it took great effort; time seemed to pass quickly, and my mind was completely immersed in it. From morning until I finished in the afternoon, I had no appetite for food—I felt neither hungry nor tired, didn't want to move, and didn't need to use the toilet. After finishing, I meant to eat something, but chewing and swallowing felt so laborious that I only drank some soup and water.

Today I did nothing at all except write these two short pieces, and I felt both fulfilled and somewhat awkward. The fulfillment came from spending the whole day doing what the manas was interested in, so the manas was quite satisfied and content. The awkwardness must be because usually the manas and the mind consciousness are highly unified and tacit, whereas this time the mind consciousness was somewhat passively coerced—with the flavor of being grabbed back by the manas to do the work—so it felt unaccustomed and unwilling, awkward, passive, and stiff.

Comment: In conceiving and writing, both the manas and the mind consciousness are involved; the two have a division of labor as well as cooperation. When the mind consciousness can accord with the manas, the manas feels pleased and is fairly satisfied with the results of the work; even after finishing the writing, He remains immersed in it and doesn't want to do anything else. That Ru Chun can clearly separate the manas and the mind consciousness shows excellent wisdom of observation, indicating that her meditative concentration (samādhi) is also quite good and her mind is rather fine and subtle—something unlikely without meditative concentration. Those who study Consciousness-Only on their own, lacking systematic and correct guidance in Consciousness-Only theory, remain muddled to this day, unable to distinguish the mind consciousness from the manas, let alone observe the manas; even their theory is vague, so nothing further can be said. This shows how important the merit and conditions (puṇya and pratyaya) for studying the Dharma are for a person.