We pursue sights, sounds, smells, flavors, tactile sensations and ideas. All of these are in what you might call a dual pattern. These are the 12 ayatanas or senses and modes. For example, sights are made up of the eye and visible objects. Sounds rely on the ear and sound. Smells are made up of the nose and odor. Flavors rely on tongue and taste. Tactile sensations depend on the body and touch. Ideas depend on mentation and their respective objects. As humans this is our limit. This is also something like a huge cage that we can’t get out of since it is our limit and who we imagine we are.
If we were to free ourself from the subtle duality of the senses that encloses us in the world of samsara and thus gain liberation, we would be back, suddenly, at the origin or source before the appearance of a single thing or thought. This is what Zen master Huangbo is referring to when he said:
"A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen."
Whatever we may believe or not believe, all takes place from within this samsaric cage of the six senses which Zen teaches us how to escape from. But if we remain unenlightened, we have not realized what transcends it, each of us will live our entire life inside this invisible cage only to be reborn in it again and again. Few can intuit what is beyond it because the world of samsara is so powerful and captivating.
The most powerful sense of this cage for us is mentation, the manas, which consists of thought and ideas. Even more, manas is all of our mental powers such as the intellect, intelligence, understanding, perception, conscience, will, etc. It is what sets us apart from other creatures. But it is still part of the cage. Since mentation is so powerful it is also very deceptive. It keeps us in the framework of duality: subject and object knowing (vijñāna). By it we cannot return to the One.
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