UnMind 44. Surangama Sutra Sextet 4: World of Illusion

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What is illusion?
Not what you may think it is —
Thought is delusion

Before we launch into the next section of the sutra on how the world of illusion comes into being, one more point on “The Matrix of the Thus-Come One” may be in order. The term “matrix” was popularized by the sci-fi movie of the same title, wherein the proposition that our perceived reality is actually a projection of a simulation controlled by others for nefarious purposes, links to ongoing conspiracy theories of the world actually being run by cabals of behind-the-scenes powers-that-be, seriously subscribed to by otherwise normal-seeming groups of people. But the meaning of matrix in Buddhism, and in general, is a bit different. A few examples from a dictionary include:

ma·trix|
1 an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure: free choices become the matrix of human life.
2 a mass of fine-grained rock in which gems, crystals, or fossils are embedded: nodules of secondary limestone set in a matrix of porous dolomite | such fossils will often be partly concealed by matrix.
• the substance between cells or in which structures are embedded: the lipid matrix of olfactory cells.
• fine material used to bind together the coarser particles of a composite substance: the matrix of gravel paths is raked regularly.
3 a mold in which something, such as a record or printing type, is cast or shaped
ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense ‘womb’): from Latin, ‘breeding female’, later ‘womb’, from mater, matr- ‘mother’.

The matrix in which something is imbedded may be physical or conceptual, then. Interesting that it has the original connotation of “mother.” Buddhism has the term tathagatagarbha, defined as “the eternal and immutable matrix of all reality: the womb of the absolute and the essence of Buddhahood.” It is sometimes called the womb of the tathagatas, and is symbolized in ceremony by red drapery.

In the Buddhist context, the idea of the matrix seems even more outrageously speculative than in the film, in terms of its implications. If and when you do come into full awareness of the matrix of the true causes and conditions of your existence, it enables you to recover your original mind consciousness, “the wondrous, everlasting understanding — the unmoving, all-pervading, wondrous suchness of reality.” Nothing so mundane and paranoid as unseen forces controlling your world, determining your destiny, and robbing you of your birthright.

The most likely derivation of the idea of a matrix in Buddha’s time would have been from the mining and smelting of metals such as gold, from ore chiseled from veins in the stone matrix. The smelting process Buddha also likened to the process of meditation. Heating the ore, then scraping off the impurities, letting it cool completely; heating again, scraping again, etc. Repetition is key. And you have to let it cool completely before heating again, to achieve greater and greater purity.

Now to “The Coming into Being of the World of Illusion,” subtitled “Adding Understanding to Understanding,” which becomes a key point: Does enlightenment include understanding, or not?

Purnamaitrayaniputra gives Ananda a break by asking the leading questions in this exchange. The near unpronounceable names of some of Buddha’s disciples is partly owing to the German-like stringing of words together. For example, “putra” at the end, means “son of.” You are permitted to abbreviate. Purna, for short, claims to be one of those in the assembly who are “free of outflows,” meaning bad habits, and one that Buddha himself has praised as being most skilled in expounding the Dharma.

Nonetheless he confesses to not being able to understand the Dharma that Buddha is now preaching. Incidentally, it should be noted — and a source of some comfort — that others, such as Ananda, are considered enlightened, even though they have not put an end to their outflows. Thus, enlightenment is not perfect, nor final. Both people and phenomena, in general, are empty of a permanent, self-existent self. That august assembly was very much like our diverse audiences today, in other words.

Purna challenges Buddha’s assertion that all elements extend throughout the “Dharma-Realm,” which we may take to indicate the whole universe. If they did so — water and earth, say — then they could not come into being separately; and further, would commingle and annihilate each other. Think fire and water. And remember, these worthies did not have the advantage of the findings of modern science.

Before answering, Buddha qualifies his audience in terms of those Hearers, or Arhats, “who have no further aspirations,” and those who have not yet experienced the “two kinds of emptiness,” namely that of people and that of phenomena. He also states his purpose, to allow all to enter the “true aranya, the still and quiet place, the state of genuine practice that will lead you to become Buddhas.”

This idea of the true place of genuine practice resonates in Master Dogen’s Genjokoan:

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs,
actualizing the fundamental point.
When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs,
actualizing the fundamental point.
For the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others’.
The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and is not merely arising now.
Here is the place, here the way unfolds.

Thank you, Dogen. He understood the matrix of spacetime in the most intimate sense.

Buddha pivots from Purna’s concern — not understanding how the various features of the earth have come into being — to the basic issue of the relationship of enlightenment to that of understanding:

B: When we talk about this understanding which characterizes enlightenment, do we mean an understanding that is intrinsic to our inherent enlightened nature? Or does our inherent enlightenment lack understanding until we gain it when enlightenment is realized?
P: Our inherent enlightenment is characterized by understanding only when that understanding is added to it.
B: But an enlightenment to which an understanding is added cannot be a true enlightenment. Such an enlightenment would indeed lack understanding if understanding were not added. But an enlightenment that lacks understanding cannot be the true intrinsic enlightenment that is inherently pure and endowed with understanding. Therefore, if you think that an understanding must be added to your inherent enlightenment, you are falsifying the true understanding, the true enlightenment.

Then Buddha clarifies that along with enlightenment, what it is that needs to be understood, is namely, delusion itself: “That is, nothing need be added to true enlightenment, but once an understanding is added nevertheless, that understanding must understand something.” That something is the matrix.

Then he goes on to detail the subtle and coarse aspects of delusion. Again, Master Dogen reprises this idea in Genjokoan:

Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas;
Those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.
Further there are those who continue realizing beyond realization,
[those] who are in delusion throughout delusion.
When buddhas are truly buddhas,
They do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas.
Yet they are actualized buddhas who go on actualizing buddhas.

Buddha goes into an even more extended, some might say rambling, riff: on how the fundamental elements interact and generate the world as we know it; onto the human world of reproduction, touching on stages of fetal development; other species’ modes of birth, i.e. the biology of the day; karma; then into the distortions and perpetuations leading to karmic entanglements over eons of successive lives. It is an exhaustive monologue that covers many of the major tenets of Buddhism, as codified and recorded in later centuries. Subheads reveal some of the highlights: “The Buddha’s Enlightenment is Irreversible; The Interfusing of the Primary Elements; Delusion Has No Basis: The Parable of Yajnadatta.” And remember, poor Ananda is the memory prodigy who recollected all this for posterity.

In the end, it seems the Buddha cannot resist throwing Ananda’s transgression up in his face again, as we would say today. Sometimes true compassion looks like cruelty:

For you, awakening and nirvana are still so distant that you will have to spend eons in difficult practice before you will reach them. Your ability to memorize all twelve types of discourse spoken by the Buddha… has merely helped you to indulge in idle speculation. Certainly you have the ability to speak about causes and conditions and about things coming into being on their own with such understanding that people call you foremost in erudition; yet despite your many eons of accumulated learning, you were not able escape your difficulty with the young Mātaṅga woman… In the young Mātaṅga woman's heart the fires of lust were extinguished, and instantly she became a sage who is free of rebirth. Now she has joined a group of vigorous practitioners of my Dharma. In her, the river of love has gone dry, and so now you are free of her.

We may be forgiven for being somewhat skeptical as to Ananda’s appreciation for being “free of her.” But we have to be circumspect regarding any contemporary interpretation of Buddha’s intent. The state of healthcare in those days, including especially the consequences of sexuality, was quite primitive. The young woman joined others who represented the early embrace of gender diversity in the Order:

Therefore, Ānanda, the many eons you have spent committing to memory the Thus-Come One's esoteric, inconceivable, wondrous, and majestic Dharma are not equal to a single day spent cultivating karma that is free of outflows and is far removed from the two worldly torments of hate and love. The young Mātaṅga woman was a courtesan, and yet her love and desire were dispelled by the spiritual power of the mantra; now she is a nun named Prakṛti. She and Rāhula's mother, Yaśodharā, have both become aware of their previous lives, and they know that, among the causes of their actions during many lifetimes, their craving for emotional love was the cause of their suffering. Now they have escaped their bonds and have received predictions. Why do you then continue to cheat yourself by standing still, merely watching and listening?

So, a few things of interest here. Remembering that this discourse was committed to writing centuries later, mitigates the apparent self-aggrandizement of Buddha’s characterization of his own teaching, words crafted later by his dharma heirs. We like to think that Buddha had some modicum of humility.

My understanding is that Ananda led the charge, in getting Buddha and the elders of the Order to accept women into the community. So this narrative seems out of sequence with that history. Being released from “emotional love” would not typically be recognized as a value in modern society. But here, it is presented as a part of slipping the bonds of earthly existence, and receiving “predictions” — i.e. of future buddhahood, from Buddha himself. Sounds a bit like transcendental credentials.

Rahula was Buddha’s son, whose name means, “fetter.” Having a son, amounted to one more attachment to this world, that Siddhartha, at that time, was trying to renounce. That Rahula was later ordained, apparently represents a father-and-son rapprochement. This was, and is, a known issue.

By “cheat yourself,” Buddha is referring to looking for the wrong kind of love in all the wrong places. Standing still, in this case, means not practicing the essential methods of meditation, and thus, not progressing along the path to liberation. Ananda is not fully engaged. But then again, he is young.

When Matsuoka Roshi was asked about “engaged Buddhism,” which in the modern context connotes a social level of engagement — taking up altruistic causes, whether in the private, charitable, or political arena — he would take the zazen posture and declare, “This is the most you can do.” In the context of this section of the Surangama, it is also the most you can do about the dilemma of delusion. Good luck.