Those who go beyond illusion

A universal reality or medium is Mind.  This is what Mind-only means in the Lankavatara Sutra.  What we see as the phenomenal world with all its differences from quarks to galaxies is Mind oscillating, moving itself creating, as a result, a contrast.  This contrast, as we mortal humans face it, which includes our psychophysical bodies, seems altogether impenetrable and bewitching. 

As we might expect, the prithagjana (worldling) stops at illusion’s edge.  He lacks the ability to penetrate through Mind’s oscillations—certainly his own vexing imagination including desires for the illusory.  

Those who find the Buddha’s teaching alluring; who seem to sense that the great voyage across the sea of samsara consists in penetrating the veil of phenomena, are not content to stay in the home of illusion.  They understand the voyage to be internal: internal in the sense that what is most primordial in them, which is pure Mind or tathata, must be able to recognize itself, in its phenomenalizations.  It is not enough just to be.  Mind can only recognize itself by penetrating through its oscillations.  Only then does it re-member and awaken to its absoluteness which contains all.  

This is no course in philosophy, either, which is thought based.  Far from it.  One must, as implicit Mind, completely pass though all of its  oscillations and disturbances, this includes thought.  Not a single oscillation can remain.  Only then does it recognize and remember itself.  One then becomes a Bodhisattva; who then embarks upon the mystery of becoming a Buddha.

It is not too difficult to see from the aforesaid that Buddhism is not Buddhism which bends down to the will of the prithagjana allowing itself to be turned into some religious cult the purpose of which is to serve those drowning in their desire for the phenomenal.  Buddhism is foremost an aryan path.  The aryan is one who stands having arrived at the door of the immortal.

 

Comments

[K Grey]

If you are "real", this is mind.

If you are "illusion", this is mind.

"Mind" is illusion of real/not real.

Seeing this, illusion of "annihilation" falls away.

[Adarnay]

Oh, believe me, Kojizen. I agree with you entirely. My point is really that a stark formulation of the issue -- as in this post but virtually nowhere else on this altogether admirable and valuable blog -- permits the kind of logical interpretation that I make. I don't myself believe it to be thus...

[Kojizen]

Arsen, Here is where you start going off into the deep end: "Therefore by penetrating to the point where all differences vanish, I vanish." I think The Zennist has covered this many times. In a nutshell the penetration through illusion is a return to self - not its vanishing or its annihilation. In addition, the illusion making process is simply the way a pure medium like Mind begins to recognize itself since such a pure medium, in itself, has no marks. I think Herr Hegel would applaud The Zennist. :)

[Adarnay]

I chuckle at your oscillations, Azanshi. The cute things kids do say!

[Azanshi]

Arsen wrote;

"Why did the Mind oscillate and thus create a difference? Why did it create illusion? And may I not then be an illusion myself? If I am not, then I am Mind. But then I ought to know why I chose to become ignorant through illusion. If I didn’t know what would happen before, was I really Mind with a leading cap? Was the sovereignty of absolute Mind not enough for me? Conversely, if I am the illusion, why is it up to me to do the penetrating? So that I can annihilate myself?"

Aaahhh….an old phenomenalist trying to get the core of chán. Spiritually dead and dumb as a doornail but at least one honest to himself, which is a good beginning.

I assume, as you are retired, and reached a point where you feel death knocking on your door, like an old Harry Potter, you have yet to find the invisibility cloak to hide yourself from the consequences of your past transgressions in this life and the ones forgotten from previous lives you so conveniently have chosen to forget.

Joking aside. Me thinks you need to contemplate the word "superlogics" + the word "koan" (gong' an). When you apply ordinary logics on a koan, or as in the authors case, the incomprehensible logics of Pure Mind, you end up with a shit load of paradoxes. But when you apply superlogics (Bi guan/Pi kuan) on a koan you do penetrate the problem at hand which prohibits enlightenment, and thus awakes to a shining principle enabling the self-realized (bodhi-sattva/light-being) to at least put one foot on the other shore (nibbana).

You get me old man?