宗鏡錄 3.15

3.15

Answer: If it is the seeing and hearing of the deluded mind, it must rely on causes and conditions, subject and object, to arise—as in the saying that the eye requires nine conditions to generate [vision], and so forth. If the conditions of form and space combining are absent, the seeing-nature has no way to manifest. The five sense faculties are also like this: they all rely on conditioned origination. Thus, they arise when conditions assemble, and cease when conditions disperse; having no autonomous controller, they are ultimately empty by nature. As a verse in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra says: 'Citta is the acrobat, manas is the jester, the five consciousnesses are their companions, and conceptualization is the audience watching the act.' Like an acrobat standing to sing and dance, turning according to another's beat—if the beat is slow, his steps are slow; if the beat is fast, his steps are fast—the five sense faculties are also like this, merely turning in accordance with the mind. As it is said: 'The body is not a wheel of thought, yet it turns following thought.' Why? If the mental ground arises, the body's wheel moves; if the mental ground ceases, faculties and objects become quiescent. The true mind is not like this: it constantly illuminates and constantly manifests, and the Iron Ring Mountains cannot conceal its radiance; it pervades the realms and pervades space, and the azure vault cannot cover its substance; it is neither pure nor mixed, and the myriad phenomena cannot hide its reality; it has no abiding and no reliance, and the defilements of dust cannot alter its nature. How could it rely on external dust to radiate light, or generate knowledge in response to objects? Naturally, it is tranquilly illuminating, numinously knowing, and serenely boundless. Therefore the Śūraṅgamasūtra says: 'The Buddha told Ānanda: "These six faculties are due to that luminous awareness: there being a brightness that illuminates awareness, losing that quintessential discernment, it adheres to delusion and emits light. For this reason, now, apart from darkness and apart from light, you have no substance of seeing; apart from movement and apart from stillness, there is originally no substance of hearing; without clearance and without obstruction, the smelling-nature does not arise; neither changing nor bland, taste has nowhere to come forth; neither separating nor joining, sensory contact is fundamentally nonexistent; without ceasing and without arising, where can discernment be lodged? If you simply do not follow the twelve conditioned marks—movement and stillness, joining and separating, blandness and change, clearance and obstruction, ceasing and arising, darkness and light—and extract any one faculty, untying its adhesion and subduing it inwardly, subduing it to return to original truth, it will emit its fundamental brightness. When the radiant nature is illuminated, the other five adhesions will be extracted and completely untied. Not relying on knowledge and vision arisen from external dust, brightness does not follow the faculties, but lodges in the faculties to emit brightness; hence the six faculties function interchangeably. Ānanda, do you not know that in this assembly now, Aniruddha sees without eyes; the nāga Upananda hears without ears; the Gaṅgā goddess smells fragrance without a nose; Gavāmpati tastes flavors with an abnormal tongue; the deity Śūnyatā experiences touch without a body, temporarily manifesting within the Tathāgata's light, yet being of the substance of wind, his body is fundamentally nonexistent; and the śrāvakas who have attained cessation and tranquility, such as Mahākāśyapa in this assembly, have long extinguished the mental faculty, yet are completely, brightly, and clearly aware without relying on mental thoughts? Ānanda, now if your faculties are completely extracted, glowing and emitting light within, these fleeting dusts and all the changing marks of the vessel world will, like ice melting in hot water, transform in an instant into unsurpassed awareness. Ānanda, consider an ordinary person who gathers seeing in his eyes: if you make him suddenly close them, dark marks appear before him, the six faculties are shrouded in darkness, and head and feet seem indistinguishable. If that person feels around the outside of his body with his hand, although he cannot see, once he distinguishes head from feet, his awareness is the same. Conditioned seeing relies on light, while darkness renders it non-seeing; but if brightness manifests of itself without light, all dark marks can never dim it. When faculties and dust are dissolved, how could luminous awareness fail to become complete and wondrous?"' Explanation: Regarding 'consider an ordinary person who gathers seeing in his eyes,' this first clarifies worldly seeing: without eyes one cannot observe; if made to close them suddenly, one sees nothing, similar to the other five faculties such as the ear. When that person feels around the outside of his body with his hand, although not relying on eyes, he still knows on his own; this illustrates that true seeing does not depend on external objects. Regarding 'conditioned seeing relies on light, while darkness renders it non-seeing,' this cites worldly ocular seeing, which must rely on the conditions of light and darkness, and the combination of faculties and dust, to effect seeing. 'Non-seeing manifests of itself without light' directly clarifies the moment of true seeing: the seeing-nature is not the eye; since it does not belong to the eye, how could it rely on what is emitted by light, darkness, faculties, and dust? Thus the brightness that is not light and the seeing that is not vision are naturally tranquilly illuminating and numinously knowing—how could they ever be interrupted? Moreover, how could the worldly marks of light and darkness, unreal and fleeting, ever cover it? For this reason, light cannot make it light, and darkness cannot make it dark. Therefore it says: 'All dark marks can never dim it.' The true nature is spontaneous; how could it not be complete and wondrous? Therefore, when a student asked an ancient master, 'What are the thousand hands and eyes of Great Compassion?', the master replied, 'Like a person reaching for a pillow in the middle of the night.'