43. Surangama Sutra Sextet 3: The Matrix

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What is the Matrix
of the so-called Thus-Come One?
Just thus — this suchness.

Buckle up. If you thought the movie, The Matrix, was a mindbender, and just might be true, I will see you that and raise you “The Matrix of the Thus-Come One,” the third section of the Surangama Sutra. In many ways, Buddha’s message is similar to the idea that we are all living in some virtual reality, a simulation inseparable in perception from a true existence. Only in Buddha’s model, the VR goggles are your own, you alone can remove them, and there is no wizard or alien race pulling the levers behind the scenes.

Buddha kicks off this third section with the Five Skandhas, declaring “The Five Aggregates Are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One.” He begins by again addressing his hapless cousin’s delusional state:

Ananda, you have not yet understood that the objects we perceive are unreal and illusory. They are subject to change, appearing here and there and disappearing here and there. Yet these illusions, each with its conventional designation, are in fact within the essential, wondrous enlightenment.

He goes on to tell Ananda and the crowd what he’s going to tell them, which may be an artifact of the later recording of these teachings, or an indication of Buddha’s fiendishly razor-sharp intellect: “The same is true of the five aggregates, the six faculties, the twelve sites, and the eighteen constituent elements.” And, sure enough, he goes on to cover each of these in great detail, and in precisely that order. But he makes a general point here that will allow us to take a general overview of what follows:

It is an illusion that they come into being when both their causes and their conditions are present, and it is an illusion that they cease to be when either their causes or their conditions are absent. You simply have not yet understood that, fundamentally, everything that comes and goes, that comes into being and ceases to be, is within the true nature of the Matrix of the Thus-Come One, which is the wondrous, everlasting understanding — the unmoving, all-pervading, wondrous suchness of reality.

Thus begins the long descent into the rabbit-hole of ordinary perception, conception, and consciousness itself. Before moving on, however, he wants us to understand that if we fall into the trap of seeking proof of the constituents of our ordinary understanding, you are bound to be disappointed:

But, though you may seek within the everlasting reality of the Matrix of the Thus-Come One for what comes and goes, for confusion and awakening, and for coming into being and ceasing to be, you will not find them there.

Buddha proceeds to deconstruct, again with laser-like analysis, logic, and language, the conventional wisdom he has just asserted to be “topsy-turvy,” as expressed in the first English version of the Heart Sutra I ever learned. The subheadings include “The Aggregate of…: A…Form; B…Sense-Perception; C…Cognition; D…Mental Formations; and finally, E…Consciousness;” covering the Fab Five. We will look at the first, that of Form, to illustrate his process, then generalize to the remaining four.

He continues by asking how it can be that the five aggregates are, fundamentally, the Matrix of the Thus-Come One, whose nature is the wondrous suchness of reality? In this example, “a clear-sighted person looks up at a clear sky, where nothing but empty space is to be seen,” and “for no particular reason, this person happens to stare, without moving his eyes, until they are stressed to the point that he sees in the empty air a disordered display of flowers, along with various other images that are disordered and chaotic and lack any real attributes. You should know that the aggregate of form can be described in similar terms.” This apparently is the origin of the Zen trope “flowers in the sky,” which indicates confusion or delusion, or at worst, hallucination. The Japanese Zen term for this phenomenon is makyo.

Then Buddha introduces the idea that “this disordered display of flowers… does not come into being from space…” which is a bit weird considering our modern definition of space. But in those days, space was listed as one of the “seven primary elements,” along with the familiar four of earth, wind, fire and water, plus awareness and consciousness, rounding out the septet. Which, you can be sure, Buddha will delve into in depth, later on. This I think we can take as a kind of inchoate physics, or understanding of causality, in the epoch before the Enlightenment and modern science came to dominate our conceptual grip on reality. Here, things are much more on an intuitive basis.

Buddha also maintains that this apparition does not “come into being from the person’s eyes.” Then he expounds upon his claims with what passed for deductive or inductive reasoning, in that context:

Suppose, Ānanda, that the display of flowers did come from space. But what has come into being from space would have to be subject to disappearing back into space; and space would not be empty if things came into being out of it and disappeared back into it. But if space were not empty, there would not be room in it for those displays of flowers to appear out of it or to disappear back into it, any more than there is room in your body, Ānanda, for another Ānanda.

That last is a compelling, and convincing argument, if somewhat irrelevant to the case at hand. There is certainly no room in here for another me, I can vouch for that. Then after demonstrating that the same refutation would address the notion that the illusion comes from the eyes, Buddha mercifully concludes:

Therefore you should know that the aggregate of forms is an illusion. It does not come into being from causes and conditions, nor does it come into being on its own.

So this becomes the boilerplate formula for Buddha’s argument against taking the rest of the skandhas for real, knocking them down one after the other, so that all five are revealed likewise to be illusion.

Next, the Six Faculties take their turn on the chopping-block: the Eye-Faculty; the Ear-Faculty; the Nose-Faculty; the Tongue-Faculty; the Body-Faculty; and last, but by no means least, the Cognitive-Faculty. These are the familiar Six Senses that we chant about every time we recite the Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra, which, after all, is nothing more than a listing of the Buddha’s teachings of Emptiness. We chant, “Given emptiness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind…” instead of “cognitive,” at the end of the line. But Buddha is differentiating true Mind from cognition only, here.

The term “faculty” may also seem odd here. In each case, Buddha explains that though the sense faculty is interactive with a range of the electromagnetic spectrum — seeing, for example, with light and darkness — sight may be dependent upon them, but they do not cause seeing. With a similar argument including that the sense faculties do not arise from space, he concludes:

In this way you should know that the eye-faculty is illusory. It does not come into being from causes and conditions, nor does it come into being on its own.

Just so. As is so for the Aggregates, just so for the Faculties, it follows that the rest follow suit. The Twelve Sites combine the sense faculties and their objects. Taken under consideration as pairs: “Eye and sights, ear and sounds, nose and smells, tongue and tastes,” as the ancient Ch’an poem Sandokai would have it. They are “not-two”: not identical, but nonetheless inseparable. And, surprise, surprise:

Fundamentally, they are not dependent on causes or conditions, and yet they do not come into being on their own.

Buddha then makes quick work of the Eighteen Constituents, yet another compounding of the Twelve Sites, adding the third leg as “consciousness,” the field in which the sensory transaction takes place. The whole shebang is sometimes referred to as the Eighteen Realms (S. dhatu) of human sentience. Again, Buddha reduces the “coming into being” of these confections to their absurdist reality:

Therefore, you should know that the cognitive faculty and objects of cognition cannot be the conditions that are necessary for the coming into being of the mind-consciousness, because none of these three constituents — cognitive faculty, objects of cognition, and mind-consciousness — has an independent existence. Fundamentally, they do not come into being from causes and conditions, nor do they come into being on their own.

As if this is not enough to reduce us all to tears along with Ananda, Buddha then dissects the Seven Primary Elements with the same, merciless scalpel. Here, Buddha’s characterization of Ananda’s lack of insight is a medical analogy, remembering that the medicine of the time is not that of our time:

You are very learned, but you are like someone who can discuss medicines yet cannot identify them when they are actually set before him.

Buddha continues with an analysis of the primary elements as a whole, then proceeds to take them up one at a time, with analogies appropriate to each, to demonstrate the general principle:

…according to what you have said, the merging or aggregating of four primary elements brings about the various phenomena that are found in the world and that are subject to change. Let us suppose… that the primary elements have separate essential natures that cannot aggregate or merge. In that case, their external attributes, too, could not aggregate or merge any more than space can aggregate or merge with perceived objects. Suppose, on the other hand, that the essential natures of the primary elements can aggregate and merge. Then their aggregating and merging would not differ from the various changes that take place in the world and that cause things to arise and perish through an unending process of coming into being and ceasing to be.

Today, it is worth pointing out, we may take exception to the denial that space can merge with perceived objects. In fact, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity made the point that matter, or objects, are essentially more space, or energy, than stuff — on the sub-molecular, atomic and subatomic levels. Nonetheless, you have to give it to Buddha for interpreting reality based on sheer intuition and analysis. Then he gets personal:

Beings, too, are born and die, and having died they are born again, forever coming to life and perishing again, Ānanda, like a torch that is swung endlessly in a circle to form a wheel of flame, or like water that turns to ice and then becomes water again.

Here Buddha shows his adeptness with a turn-of-a-phrase, capturing two of his more memorable analogies for life and death in concrete examples from two of the four primary elements. Later, when he digs into the element of earth more deeply, no pun, we come across this remarkable passage:

Let us consider the nature of the primary element earth. It may take as large a form as a continent and as small a form as a mote of dust. In its most subtle aspect, the primary element earth appears as particles that are so fine that they can hardly be distinguished from space itself. If these minute particles were divided further into seven parts, they would then be as small as perceived objects can be. If they were divided yet further, nothing would be left but space.

So this constitutes the limit, or boundary, of what was then known about the relationship of matter to energy. When you make that final cut, separating the ultimate particle into two, you are right on the edge of form and emptiness. But there is an intuitive grasp of the fact that “form is emptiness; emptiness is form,” as related in the Heart Sutra. We can see the limit of intuition as well in the next argument:

Now if these most minute particles could be divided until they became space, Ānanda, then space would be capable of bringing perceived objects into being… You should see that space, in whatever amount, could never be accumulated in order to bring into being even a single one of these most minute particles. Nor can it be true that these most minute particles are created by the particles themselves.

Nowadays of course, it is common knowledge that particles of the virtual sort do, indeed, arise from space. But we also know that these particles are not exactly particulate, in that they behave as waves. This is no longer considered a dichotomy, though I doubt that anyone would claim to understand it. Buddha is going for a nondual understanding that likewise is not understanding in any ordinary sense:

You simply do not know that, in the Matrix of the Thus-Come One, the real nature of the primary element earth is identical to the real nature of emptiness. The real nature of the primary element earth is fundamentally pure and extends throughout the Dharma-Realm. The extent to which beings are aware of that real nature depends on the capacity of their understanding. The primary element earth appears to them in accord with their karma. Ordinary beings, in their ignorance, mistakenly suppose that the primary element earth comes into being from causes and conditions or that it comes into being on its own. These are distinctions and constructs made by the conscious mind. They are mere words, devoid of meaning.

Buddha then quickly disposes of the other primary elements — fire, water, and wind — and wraps up his dissertation with three bonus discussions on space, awareness, and consciousness. We can forego the further discussion of space, with our more sophisticated physics of today, but what he has to say about awareness and consciousness may be instructive; they are often used interchangeably. Again he chastises Ananda for his lack of contemplative practice:

Ānanda, your basic disposition has become so murky that you do not realize that, fundamentally, your visual awareness, your awareness of sounds, your tactile awareness, and your cognitive awareness are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One… You still do not know that the real nature of your visual awareness is inherent in the Matrix of the Thus-Come One and identical to your enlightened understanding, and that the essence of enlightenment is your illuminating awareness. Fundamentally pure, it extends throughout the Dharma-Realm. The extent to which beings are aware of its real nature depends on the capacity of their understanding.

Echoes of master Dogen in Genjokoan; Bendowa: “Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.” Extending throughout the Dharma-Realm likewise depends upon practice, one presumes, and is not limited to vision:

Just as the awareness of one sense-faculty, the eye, extends throughout the Dharma-Realm, so also do the wondrous, resplendent powers of hearing, smelling, tasting, tactile awareness, and cognitive awareness extend throughout the Dharma-Realm.

Note that the ordinary powers of perception are considered wondrous and resplendent — the awakening to the eye of practice is not something separate and apart from the present miracle of awareness. But another caveat:

They fill up the entirety of space throughout the ten directions. How could they be limited to one particular place? In fact, the primary element visual awareness becomes apparent to beings in accord with their karma. In their ignorance, ordinary beings mistakenly suppose that visual awareness comes into existence from causes and conditions or that it comes into being on its own. These are all distinctions and constructs made by the conscious mind. They are mere words, devoid of real meaning.

And that’s a wrap. The repeat refrain of “mere words, devoid of real meaning,” was surely Buddha’s devastating and dismissive critique of the pundits of the day, who were peddling their visions of reality in the same marketplace of ideas. A final word on consciousness, which in this context is apparently the overlord of the consciousnesses of the six sense faculties. Buddha treats the term as he did awareness, with the possible distinction that awareness can be devoid of discernment, whereas:

…the nature of consciousness is that it has no real basis. Its coming into existence in response to the six faculties and their objects is an illusion. Look around now at the sages assembled here. As you glance from one to another, your eyes see them as if in a mirror, which does not make distinctions. But your consciousness will identify each of the sages in turn as Mañjuśrī, Pūrṇamaitrāyaṇīputra, Maudgalyāyana, Subhūti, and Śāriputra. Now, does this distinction-making faculty, this primary element consciousness, arise from your eye-faculty? Does it arise from perceived objects? Does it arise from space? Or does it arise abruptly, without a cause?

Same approach, same argument, finally causing all in the audience to have an epiphany, or mass hypnosis, and ultimately leading Ananda to make a vow to reach enlightenment:

At that time, Ānanda and the rest of the great assembly, having received the subtle and wondrous instruction given by the Buddha, the Thus-Come One, felt that their bodies and minds were emptied and hardly seemed to exist. They were free of all concerns and impediments. All in the assembly became aware that their minds pervaded the ten directions and that they could see everything throughout space in all ten directions as clearly as one might see an object such as a leaf in the palm of one’s hand.

But wait, there’s more. Next segment we will look into “The Coming into Being of the World of Illusion.” Stay tuned. Meanwhile check out the real matrix in meditation.