It is difficult for the average person to understand that the shape of a clay pot is really nothing apart from the clay itself. Most people are mesmerized by shapes who have no deep wish to look at their prized shapes from the standpoint of their raw substance. They will hardly admit that a gold object is an origination (utpada) of gold; moreover it is nothing apart from it. Take away the gold—there’s no gold ring or Buddha statue.
According to the Buddha, the substance of this world is Mind or other interchangeable terms used in the Buddhist canon for the absolute. Nothing is apart from Mind as logic dictates. In addition, we can think of Mind as the absolute medium of the universe there being no other. In this wise, to see Mind is to seen that all things do not fundamentally exist. If they exist, the exist in the way of illusion or mâyâ. To explain this Seng-chao in the Book of Chao writes:
“Thus all dharmas [things], because actually in one way they are not existent, cannot be considered as existent; but because in another way they are not non-existent, they cannot be considered as non-existent. Why is this? If you wish to speak of their being, this being is not absolute being [Mind]. If you wish to speak of their non-being, their manifestations have forms. These phenomenal forms do not constitute non-being, yet, not having absolute reality, they also do not constitute real being. This, then, elucidates the theory of the emptiness of the unreal. There fore the Fang-kuang says: ‘All the dharmas [things] are false symbols, not real. They resemble a man produced by magic: this man is not non-existent, yet, being a product of magic, is not a real man’” (Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy II, 264–65).
For the adept who has engaged with Mind, directly, surely sees phenomena, but not as phenomena in the previous way, each thing bearing its own unique nature (svabhâva). Far from it. Things now are like wave-phenomena, let us say, on the infinite ocean of Mind. They are fashioned from one substance—and are nothing apart from it.
Of this one ubiquitous substance, in Fa-tsang’s Essay on the Gold Lion (Chin Shih-tzu Chang), the beautifully crafted gold of the lion represents this one ubiquitous substance “which by its own nature is clear, pure, all-perfect, and brilliant.” This description is nothing less than the luminous Mind substance (prakrti-prabhasvara-citta). Fa-tsang goes on to say of this substance that it is “the dharma-nature which lies within the Tathâgata-garbha [matrix], and from all time it is, through its own nature, self-complete and sufficient....Its substance shines everywhere, there is no obscurity it does not illumine. That is why it is said to be all-perfect and brilliant.”
When one is thoroughly immersed in Mind so that he no longer sees things as unique manifestations (utpada) but as Mind-only, he comes to the state of anutpattikadharmakshanti which translated means, the acceptance that nothing is manifest (apart from Mind). Rather accurately, D.T. Suzuki elaborates on anutpattikadharmakshanti as follows:
“This is the recognition that nothing has been born or created in the world, that when things are seen yathâbhûtam from the point of view of absolute knowledge, they are Nirvana itself, are not at all subject to birth-and-death” (Studies In The Lankavatara Sutra, 381).
This, I hasten to add, is not a theoretical experience. It is utterly mystical and permanent. One can think of it as a correction in which the adept is looking at things correctly; no longer judging things from the perspective of the body, illusory phenomena such as desires, thoughts and imagination, or one or all of the Five Aggregates.
Turning back to Fa-tsang’s Essay on the Gold Lion all of the phenomenal world, from a Quark to a universe, is like the shape of the lion. This means things are void of Mind. In fact, all phenomena do not really exist anymore than the lion shape made of gold exists apart from the gold, itself. This takes us to the heart of illusion or mâyâ. Illusion is the appearing of the unreal such that it tyrannizes the real making it seem absent. But anutpattikadharmakshanti all but reverses this. Now appearance is just appearance—the unreal is precisely unreal. The only reality is pure Mind; nothing is manifest; nirvana is.
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