宗鏡錄 69.33.2

69.33.2

"The fundamental cause of the five aggregates is equally deluded conception. Your body was first produced through the conception of your parents; if your mind were not conceived, it could not come to transmit life within conception. As I have said before: when the mind conceives of a sour taste, saliva is produced in the mouth; when the mind conceives of ascending a height, the soles of the feet experience a tingling ache. The precipitous cliff is not there, and the sour object has not arrived: if your physical body were not of the same category as deluded unreality, how could saliva come forth because of talking about sourness? Therefore you should know that your present form-body is named the first deluded conception, which is solidity. As was just said, the mind conceiving of overlooking a height can make your form genuinely experience a tingling ache; because feeling arises, it can move the body of form. Your present favorable benefit and adverse harm, these two appearances driving each other, are named the second deluded conception, which is illusory clarity. Because of your thoughts and reflections, you direct your physical body. The body is not of the same category as thought; why then does your body follow what thought directs? Taking various images, the mind arises and the form grasps them, corresponding with thought: waking, it is the conceiving mind; sleeping, it becomes dreams. Thus your conceiving thoughts perturb deluded sentiments; this is named the third deluded conception, which is interpenetration. The principle of transformation does not abide; it imperceptibly shifts at every moment: nails grow and hair emerges, energy wanes and wrinkles appear on the face; day and night they replace each other, and you are never aware of it. Ānanda! If this were not you, why would your substance alter? If it were certainly your real self, why are you unaware of it? Thus your various formations, never stopping from moment to moment, are named the fourth deluded conception, which is latent obscurity. Furthermore, the essential clarity of yours, at the place where it is serene and unmoving, is called the permanent; within the body it does not go beyond seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing. If it were truly pure and real, it would not admit habituated delusion. Why did you once in past years see a strange object, and as years passed by, there was neither remembering nor forgetting, yet afterwards, when suddenly beholding that past oddity again, the memory was clear and vivid, never having been lost? Then within this essential clarity, serene and unmoving, it is perfumed moment to moment—how could it be calculated? Ānanda, you should know that this serenity is not real; it is like a rushing stream of water that looks tranquil from afar, but because the flow is so rapid, it is not seen, yet it is not that there is no flow. If it were not the source of conception, how could it receive habituated conceiving? Unless your six faculties mutually function, joining and opening, this deluded conception will never be extinguished. Therefore within your present seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, there are subtle habituations; within the serene clarity, they are like shadowy non-entities, the fifth inverted, subtle essential conception. Ānanda, these five aggregates of clinging are accomplished by the five deluded conceptions. If you now wish to know the shallowness and depth of their causal boundaries: form and emptiness alone are the boundary of form; contact and separation alone are the boundary of feeling; remembering and forgetting alone are the boundary of conception; cessation and arising alone are the boundary of formations; serenity entering and merging into serenity returns to the boundary of consciousness. The sources of these five aggregates arise in overlapping layers: arising is caused by the existence of consciousness, while cessation is eliminated beginning with form. In principle, there is sudden awakening, and following awakening they simultaneously vanish; in phenomena, they are not suddenly eliminated, but exhausted step by step." Therefore, if one sees the five aggregates as existing, that is the world of sentient beings. If one realizes that the five aggregates are empty, that is the world of the truth of reality. If one reaches the true mark of the five aggregates, that is the world of correct wisdom of the middle way, the primary meaning. Apart from these three worlds of the five aggregates, there is not a single dharma that can be posited or established as conventional or as real; what is explained throughout the teachings of an entire lifetime offers no other skillful means than this. Awakened to this, one becomes a Buddha; deluded about this, one is an ordinary being. It is only the one mind; its expansion and contraction are not different. Why? Because one aggregate is named form, and four aggregates are named mind. Arising from the mind, it is therefore called form. Mind is the support; form is that which is supported. When that which is supported is gathered back to the support, there is only the one mind. Root and branch are fundamentally identical; substance and function are eternally joined. The great purport of the Mirror of the Source brings an end to words here. In refuting the six sense bases, the text states: "The Buddha told Ānanda, 'For example, when a person is weary, they sleep; having slept soundly, they then wake. Observing sense objects, they remember; losing memory, they forget. These are the inverted arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing, which are inhaled and habituated, returning inside, not transgressing one another; this is called the mental sense faculty. Both this mind and the weariness are equally manifestations of fatigue from staring bodhi. Based on the two kinds of deluded sense objects of arising and ceasing, gathered knowing dwells within, grasping inner sense objects; seeing and hearing flow in reverse, but the flow does not reach the ground; this is called the nature of sensing and knowing. This nature of sensing and knowing, apart from these two objects of waking and sleeping, arising and ceasing, has ultimately no substance. Thus, Ānanda, you should know that such a faculty of sensing and knowing does not come from waking or sleeping, does not exist from arising or ceasing, does not issue from the sense faculty, and is not produced from emptiness. Why? If it came from waking, sleep would immediately cease along with it—what would be used for sleeping? If it necessarily existed at the time of arising, ceasing would be identical to nonexistence—who would be made to experience ceasing? If it existed from ceasing, upon arising it would be ceased and nonexistent—who would know arising? If it issued from the sense faculty, the two marks of waking and sleeping open and close according to the body; apart from these two substances, this sensing and knowing is identical to flowers in the sky, ultimately devoid of nature. If it were produced from emptiness, it would naturally be the knowing of emptiness; what would it have to do with your sense base? Therefore you should know that the mental sense base is delusive and unreal; it is fundamentally neither causes and conditions nor a spontaneous nature.'" Explanation: This refutes the mental sense base. The commentary says: "'Observing sense objects, they remember'—remembering is arising. 'Losing memory, they forget'—forgetting is ceasing. Losing and remembering are not separate from one's own mind, yet one deludedly considers them to be external objects. Therefore it says, 'These are the inverted arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing.' 'Inhaled and habituated, returning inside, not transgressing one another' means that arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing are inhaled and habituated, returning within the conscious mind, hence 'returning inside.' The preceding thought ceases and the subsequent thought arises without disorder or confusion, hence 'not transgressing one another.' Thus the sūtra says: 'The nature of mind arises and ceases just like an ape.' One should know that seeing objects arise and cease is precisely the mark of the arising and ceasing of one's own mind. Therefore it is said, 'When the mind arises, various dharmas arise.' 'Grasping inner sense objects; seeing and hearing flow in reverse, but the flow does not reach the ground; this is called the nature of sensing and knowing' means that the eyes and ears grasp external sense objects, which instantly flow into the ground of the mind; coming from the outside to the inside is called 'flowing in reverse.' The eyes and ears only take present objects as conditions; by the second moment, their conditioning cannot reach them, hence 'the flow does not reach the ground'; the mental sense faculty alone grasps them."