2012-08-20

Why Conditioned Phenomena are Impermanent? (Part 4 of 5)

Bei-Da-Wu Mountain
(http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/wind-daughter/article?mid=124&prev=1046&l=f&fid=12)


For the ones who are interested in digging deeper to find out more about the ins and outs of our existence – the searching path is rather plain though, without sensation or excitement. It is because the Buddhist teachings are to uncover what we already have by getting rid of the hindrance-vexations, not to gain something more from the outside world. However, we all prefer to watch the shooting off fireworks, since it is far more fascinating than to understand the Truth of life. And the constant inclination to cling to some objects is the root cause for our cyclic births and deaths.

In the desire-realm, an individual’s existence consists of name-and-form (five aggregates); the form-aggregate 色法refers to the physical body (tangible), and our mental status refers to the four aggregates (sensation, perception, formation, and vijnana), which belong to the intangible mind dharma心法 .

The physical body serves as a channel to transmit the outer sense-objects to our brain to be received by the six vijnanas (six sense-consciousnesses六識). So the transmitted internal images of sense-objects are displayed on the corresponding area of the brain, just like the function of a monitor screen. We enjoy (the conscious mind意識) the sensations and excitements that derived from the displays of our brains, while in fact, our minds stay inside our physical bodies all the time, and have never been out and truly contacting the sense-objects in any way; we are merely seeing the transmitted reflections on the brains.

It is the same way as the captain of a submarine, he steers underwater via his monitor screen, and he does not actually touch the outside world. In other words, whole our life experiences are limited within the transmitted internal images of sense-objects on our brains. Moreover, every individual perceives his/her internal images of sense-objects differently in accordance with his/her own karmic seeds stored within the Alayavijnana (teachings of the third round of dharma transmission).

That is also why everyone could react so differently to one single matter in daily life. For example, like my posts on the threads, the readers’ reactions vary from extreme minus to real plus. The reactions purely reflect a person's own minds. (part 4 of 5)

1 comment:

  1. Thanks to our healthy physical bodies that we are able to receive all sorts of images and messages, and throughout our lifetimes, we rely so much on our conscious minds that we consider the conscious minds to be the eternity. But the conscious mind is an impermanent mind, which will cease to exist every night during sleep and cease to exist as well after we have passed away.

    In terms of Buddhism, the worldly phenomena are called emptiness-appearance 空相, because all of these will eventually cease to exist, but within each and every mortal living being, the eighth vijnana, Alayavijnana, coexists with every temporary physical body, and it is immortal. This is the target for the Mahayana practitioners to dig out the origin of life utilizing this unceasing temporary existence (periodic births-and-deaths 分段生死).

    The overall manifestation of emptiness-appearance does have its worldly function and mission, if one grasps the correct concept of true Buddhism, he/she will is able to make the best of them for Buddhist cultivation to attain liberation or Buddhahood, or the other way around, keep submerging endlessly in cyclic births-and-deaths by karmic force. Logically, your fate and life is in your own hands, mind you, not only this some dozens of years, but can be all eternity! (part 5/end)

    ReplyDelete