- [Cleary]: Constantly strengthened with impressions by the intellect as a basis of permanent reliance, the mind rambles in the realm of the senses like iron drawn to a magnet.
Ruled by the intellect alone, the result is being permanently marred with sensate phenomena. Suzuki refers to this as “the root being [incessantly] nourished with habit energy.” Thich Nhat Hanh offers a good observation on the nature of this habit energy:
This impregnation of our consciousness, the habit energies carried by the seeds, affects our patterns of seeing, feeling, and behaving. The seeds in our consciousness manifest not only in a psychological form but also as the objects of our perception -mountains, rivers, other people. Because of habit energies, we are not able to perceive things as they truly are, We interpret everything we see or hear in terms of our habit energy. (From Habit Energies, Transformation at the base)
Where Thich Nhat Hanh falls short, though, is that he encourages one to replace “negative habit energies” with “positive habit energies.” This is a modern misnomer in that “habit energy” remains just that—habitual resonances stored up within the Alaya-receptacle which will only reproduce themselves regardless if they are negative or positive, because even a positive occurrence can turn rotten in a given set of circumstances. What matters is to remain neutral (Buddha’s in-between).
- The original source on which all sentient beings are dependent is beyond theorisation; all doings cease and emancipation obtains, knowing and known are transcended.
The primordial-orchestrator transcends any form of speculative construction. One later learns to discern in this realization that both knowing and the knower are phenomenal based and thus limited. An observation in our archives reads thus:
[The knower] implies some cognitive entity that “knows”, observes and makes an analysis of what it perceives. The Unborn is not an objective or subjective knower–IT transcends all such cognitive interplay–IT is not some “Perfect Knower” [who] discerns dharmata. IT is beyond any such cognitive interplay, i.e., not some “giant brain” that perceives and makes qualitative judgments on phenomena
- In the Samadhi known as Maya-like, one goes beyond the ten stages of Bodhisattvaship; one who is removed from thought and knowledge perceives the Mind-king.
Suzuki describes the Samadhi known as Maya-like thusly:
This means the body attained by a Bodhisattva when he enters into the Samadhi known as Maya-like, that is, the Samadhi that enables one to look intuitively into the nature of existence and realise that it has no self-substance and is like maya. (Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, pg. 140)
The Mind-king: the Original Mind-king is none-other than the unobstructed Dharmakayic-Principle. The Lanka here teaches that once one Recollects this Principle, then one will be also empowered to supercede any need of ascending the ten bhūmis. Our series on The Vajrasamādhi Sutra also states:
The Perfection of Noble Wisdom is ultimately in the Mind-Seat alone—thus a [Self-Benediction] without the need of any secondary agencies for formalized authorization.
- When a “turning-back” takes place in the mind, one abides permanently in the palace of lotus-form, which is born of the realm of Maya.
This “palace of lotus-form” can be likened to padmavimāna, or a Mind-palace of the Pure Land of the saṃbhogakāya.
- Abiding in it one attains a life of imagelessness, and, like a many-coloured jewel, performs religious deeds for all beings.
When firmly abiding in this aforementioned Lotus Palace, one eventually learns to even transcend any of its “formal” qualities into the majestic wonder of imagelessness. A commentary from the Entry into the Dharmadhātu describes it thusly:
Yea, the Citadel of Mind is an Invincible Fortress; yet all of these wondrous attributes are but mere “illusoriness” in light of the “spiritual city of omniscience.” THAT Spiritual City is the very Blessed Sanctum Santorum of the Unborn Mind wherein all sense of “otherness” is wholly eradicated in the impregnable and Deathless Face of imagelessness.
- (Cleary): There is nothing created or uncreated outside of imagination; the ignorant with deluded thought grasp them like a barren women does her son in a dream.
This simile of a barren woman is a common feature in the Lanka. Her womb is empty, just as a sentient being imagines all manner of myriad self-empty images that produce nothing more than still-births amidst the most fertile of imaginations.
- Let it be known that without self-nature, unborn, and empty are a personal soul and the Skandha-continuity, causation, the Dhatus, and [the notion of] existence and non-existence.
Outside of the Unborn Mind, no-thing comes into existence or experiences non-existence.
- To me teaching is an expedient, but I do not teach external signs; the ignorant because of their attachment to existence seize on signified and signifying.
A Real Teacher of the way never focuses on what can be grasped externally. This teaching is a silent and signless endeavor—never seizing the phenomenal moment and thus severing all attachments to all forms of outward signification.
- A knower of all things is not an all-knower, and all is not within all; the ignorant discriminate and [think] “I am the enlightened one in the world”; but I am not the enlightened nor do I enlighten others.
The fool hath said in his heart, “I am the Unborn.” The Unborn Spirit never classifies itself as being enlightened or extending any form of enlightenment to others—nihil conprehendendum!