UnMind 41. Surangama Sutra Sextet 1: Where Is the Mind?

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Inside the body?
Outside it or in-between?
Or anywhere else?

In the introduction to The Surangama Sutra, A New Translation by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, the section on “The Reasons for the Teaching” explains six reasons for this one:

1) The first is the importance of balancing learning and meditation practice.

The authors explain that Ananda, the interlocutor in this sutra, had “the keenest memory of all the Buddha’s disciples” but thought he could rely solely on his intelligence and neglected his meditation practice, thus making himself vulnerable to the “spell” the courtesan in the story cast upon him.

They also explain “The Syllogism and the Tetralemma” as key forms of formal logical argument that the Buddha employs in trying to help Ananda navigate the intricacies of the nondual nature of Mind. Quoting one example, of using the five parts of a syllogism: proposition, reason, instance, application and conclusion:

1) Proposition: it is the mind, not the eyes, that see
2) Reason: our visual awareness is active even if nothing is being seen;
3) Instance drawn from ordinary life: In the Buddha’s words, “If you asked a blind man on the street, ‘Do you see anything?’ he would no doubt answer, ‘All I see is darkness.’”
4) Application of the instance: “Reflect upon what that might mean. Although the blind man sees only darkness, his visual awareness is intact.”
5) Conclusion: “The eyes themselves simply reveal visible objects; it is the mind that sees, not the eyes.”

A briefer explanation of the Tetralemma, or Fourfold Negation, follows:

In the logic of ancient India, statements could be affirmed, negated, neither affirmed nor negated, and both affirmed and negated.
In this fourfold negation, sometimes called the “tetralemma,” (catuskoti), a proposition is asserted to be neither true, nor not true, nor both true and not true, nor neither true nor not true.

That’s a lot of neither-nors, for those of us who presume that Zen promotes a positive mental attitude. But they go on to explain that “This formula can serve as a reminder in our practice that all we perceive is empty of any attribute, and so nothing definitive can be asserted about the world and the contents of the mind.” In more recent times, namely the Thirteenth Century, Master Dogen affirms this in several fascicles from Shobogenzo, including “Self-Fulfilling Samadhi” (J. Jijuyu Zammai):

All this however does not appear within perception because it is unconstructedness in stillness — it is immediate realization. If practice and realization were two things, as it appears to the ordinary person, each could be recognized separately. But what can be met with recognition is not realization itself, because realization is not reached by a deluded mind.

Implicit in this last is that, therefore, any form of recognition, of any perception, is itself delusion. It is only when perception itself undergoes deconstruction that what becomes apparent is the delusory nature of perception. If what is real cannot be perceived, let alone described and asserted as real, we have to embrace a new definition of experience itself, long before it is translated into perception.

Nagarjuna gets a mention as the founder of the “Emptiness (Madhyamaka) school of Buddhism,” who “popularized the logical negation of these four possibilities as a way of showing the emptiness of anything that might be construed as a real, permanent self or phenomenon or as an attribute of a real, permanent self or phenomenon.” Note that the imputed self is lumped in with all phenomena as unreal.

The question of whether things are real, or not, is not the question in Zen, however. The existential question in Zen is not either-or, black-and-white, but how things exist. They exist by virtue of emptiness — that is, with determinate characteristics of impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality. Given these three attributes, yeah, things exist. For now. Forever is a different story. You might make the case that “thingness” exists forever, and no thing is separate from all things, but what we perceive as a thing is pulling a fast one on us. Don’t be fooled.

An interesting and, I think, cogent definition of enlightenment and awakening is included, and I quote:

In this volume we use the English terms “enlightenment” and “awakening” as synonyms. In Buddhism, when these terms are used in a formal sense, they do not connote a temporary experience but rather a complete and irreversible transformation of one’s fundamental way of being in the world. Only the enlightenment of a Buddha is perfect and complete.

The text goes on to explain that others, such as Bodhisattvas, “have awakened but have not perfected their awakening.” There are several other definitions of some of the more ubiquitous jargon terms of Buddhism, which are often unexplained, and just as often lend to confusion, rather than alleviating it.

While the idea of perfecting awakening may seem to contradict the mark of imperfection that is a characteristic of dukkha, the unsatisfactory nature of sentient existence, it is important that we do not go off in a tizzy of intellectual analysis with every seeming contradiction. We must have faith that there is no real dichotomy in reality, and as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, no dichotomy in Zen. All such confusions will be resolved in meditation of the “right” kind, is a kind of faith in Zen Buddhism.

So just where is this so-called mind? If there is such a thing, it must be somewhere, right? And what about this Original Mind versus ordinary mind? Are there two minds? We often hear the saying, “I am of two minds about this…” As one of many confusions that arise in Zen practice, owing to the dualistic nature of the discriminating mind in trying, and failing, to comprehend a non-dual reality, the question of the true mind versus the constructed mind may be foremost in the focus of Zen meditation.

In the section on “The Request [from Ananda] for Dharma,” the dialog ensues:

The Buddha said to Ananda, “It is as you say: your mind and eyes were the reason for your admiration and delight. Someone who does not know where his mind and eyes are will not be able to overcome the stress of engagement with perceived objects… I am now asking you: precisely where are your mind and eyes?”

In the interrogation that follows, Ananda responds with great sincerity and increasing stress as Buddha mercilessly rejects each response, thus mercifully reducing Ananda’s reliance on intellectual analysis to futility. Ironically, Buddha expresses the very engagement with perception as a form of stress. That the mind is in the body is the first and most obvious idea, dismissed immediately with a syllogism, demonstrating the impossibility of Ananda’s assertion. Same for outside the body. Ditto for residing in the faculty of vision. Even that the mind is in the middle, between the sense faculty and its object. Even no specific location — no dice.

One gets the impression that Ananda is like the sinner in the old spiritual, “O sinner man, where you gonna run to? All on that day.” There is no place to hide, no answer that is going to satisfy this demon in hot pursuit of him. This may represent the first koan assignment and the following, distress-inducing, exchange with the Rinzai master.

Then Buddha performs a minor miracle, as he is wont to do — so that all present have an intense, if unexplainable, experience of the Buddha’s power, involving light radiating from his countenance, infinite worlds appearing in all directions at the same time — your garden variety of astonishing signs that he is about to say something significant, so listen up:

“People who undertake a spiritual practice but who fail to realize the ultimate enlightenment… all fail because they do not understand two fundamentals and are mis- taken and confused in their practice.
“Ananda, what are the two fundamentals? The first is the mind that is the basis of death and rebirth and that has continued since time without beginning. This mind is dependent on perceived objects, and it is this mind that you and all beings make use of and that each of you consider to be your own nature.
“The second fundamental is full awakening, which also has no beginning; it is the original and pure essence of nirvana. It is the original understanding, the real nature of consciousness. All conditioned phenomena arise from it, and yet it is among those phenomena that beings lose track of it.”

We are going to have to leave it there for this segment. A real cliff-hanger, with lots for you to chew on. We will continue with “The Nature of Visual Awareness,” one of my personal obsessions, next time, with a brief wrap-up of where the mind really resides. Thoroughly investigate this in your meditation.