Selected Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (62)

Original text:佛言大王。耳闻舍声。起于舍想。如人梦中。闻他宣说。不了义句。于意云何。是人觉已。忆念梦中。所闻之声。为实有不。王曰不也。

佛言大王。是人所梦。执以为实。是智者不。王曰。不也世尊。何以故。梦中毕竟。无有音声。何况更有。不了义句。当知是人。徒自疲劳。都无有实。

Explanation: The Buddha said: Great King, sentient beings hear with their ears sounds that are neither wholesome nor unwholesome—sounds of equanimity that depart from both extremes—and grasp them as real. It is like a person who, in a dream, hears someone else speaking words that carry no meaning, incoherent phrases that do not form proper sentences. Upon waking from the dream, he keeps recalling the words he heard in the dream. What do you think—are these things truly existent? King Śuddhodana said: They are not truly existent, World-Honored One.

The Buddha said: Great King, if this person takes his own dream to be truly existent, is he a wise person? King Śuddhodana replied: This person has no wisdom, World-Honored One. Why? Because in a dream there are, in the final analysis, no sounds at all, let alone incoherent phrases that do not form proper sentences. This person has indeed driven his mind to fatigue for nothing; there is no real matter whatsoever.

The mind of equanimity is a state that is neither joyful nor distressed, abiding in the middle, departing from both extremes—neither craving nor aversion, neither good nor bad, neither suffering nor happiness. At this time the mind is calm without ripples, without highs and lows. For example, when you look at a person and feel nothing in particular, neither liking nor disliking him, that is the mind of equanimity. If a mind of liking arises, then one experiences happiness and has a feeling of pleasure; if one finds the person disagreeable, that is a feeling of suffering, and hatred emerges. Thus feelings are divided into three kinds: the feeling of suffering, the feeling of pleasure, and the neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā) that is neither suffering nor happiness.

As for the sound of equanimity, it refers to sounds that belong neither to the wholesome nature nor to the unwholesome nature, abiding in the middle in a state that is neither good nor bad. This person, in a dream, heard someone else speak incoherent words, meaningless words. Although he did not feel anything particular about them in his mind, he took them as truly existent matters and kept recollecting them. Even if one grasps this state of equanimity as truly existent and craves this thought of equanimity, not knowing that the six sense objects of equanimity are equally false and illusory, one still does not escape birth and death.

The "indefinitive phrases" here are different from the "indefinitive sūtras" in the Buddhist scriptures; they are not the same meaning. Buddhist sūtras are divided into definitive sūtras and indefinite sūtras. Definitive sūtras are true, expounding the real dharma; indefinite sūtras do not expound the real dharma. Definitive sūtras expound the Mahāyāna sūtras' ultimate truth of the tathāgatagarbha dharma—this is called definitive, the fundamental dharma, the dharma of ultimate reality; other sūtras, those that do not touch upon the tathāgatagarbha dharma, are not definitive sūtras. Those that do not touch upon the dharma of our true mind, the tathāgatagarbha, are indefinite, not fundamental sūtras. Of course, within definitive sūtras there are also indefinite phrases, and within indefinite sūtras there are even more indefinite phrases.