“..beings are not aware of the cause of their confusion.
Because they do not realize that confusion is based only on confusion, their
confusion persists. They need merely to realize that confusion has no ultimate
basis, and the basis of their deluded thoughts will disappear. There is no need
for them to wish that the cause of their confusion would disappear, because no
cause existed in the first place.” (The
Surangama Sutra, p.160)
When I
am feeling confused, do I ever need to figure
out my confusion? I think about an analogy of a string with knots in it. When
there is a knot on a string, does this mean that I am dealing with a defective
string? Has the string disappeared when
there is a knot? In fact, the knot is just a form and special shape of the
string. It is not a permanent state of the string, and it doesn’t affect the
substance of the string itself. In the same way, I feel that, in the chapter on
Yajnadata’s dream, the Buddha is implying that confusion is just another form
of the true mind. The fact that I am confused means that I have some awareness
to be confused. And that fundamental awareness comes from the true mind. For this
reason, there is no ‘ultimate basis’ for the confusion that the Buddha
describes. It is as though we are trying to figure out how to get rid of the
knot by figuring out its substance.
Of course, a knot is nothing more than a string tied in a certain
configuration. There is no distinction between the substance of the knot and
that of the string itself. Furthermore, I make the problem worse when I label
the knot as ‘bad’, and do anything in my power to cut the knot. But the knot is
irrevocably tied with the string. If I realize that the knot already has the
nature of a string, would I be so determined to cut it? In the same way, a
dream is one form of awareness. But if I try to differentiate parts of the
dream to know why the dream is unfolding as it does, this too is engaging in
delusion.
One of
the themes I repeatedly encounter in the Surangama Study Group I attend is the value of confusion. Confusion allows me
to see what I don’t know, and this knot-knowing (pardon the pun) is so
essential to the path of practice. Even failure to realize is a valuable aspect
of practice. To admit and experience knot-knowing is to keep trying to
understand what the Buddha means when he remarks that “confusion has no
ultimate basis”. Differentiating between different kinds of phenomena is not
the way to resolve the existential confusion that Purna displays at the
beginning of this chapter. Purna distinguishes between beings who are deluded
(with their minds covered) and luminous mind. So he tries to make this
distinction between deluded and not deluded by referring to phenomena (the
beings he observes or reflects upon). He has not realized that the
deluded/not-deluded distinction is still part of a dream. True mind is not
something that has a distinction or an opposite. In the same way, trying to awaken from a
dream using the images of dreams themselves is not quite going to reveal the
awakened mind. Purna’s question has to be reversed. He needs to reflect on who
observes the distinction between awakened and deluded. In this way, he might
begin to illuminate an already and always awakened mind.
Meditative practice, for me, is
about reminding myself that I won’t find answers by chasing after objects, knowledge
and information. Such things can only point to a mind that cannot be grasped. The
existential question of life needs to penetrate to point to the mind that
generates all thoughts. Any question or confusion needs to ‘turn on its head’,
to illuminate that who is confused in the first place. By questioning the
source of confusion, I might just stop chasing my tail for a moment. The effect
of this is to stop engaging elements of the dream to uncover the existential
question that governs sentient life. Even when I do engage those elements, I
need to keep investigating how and where they arise. Otherwise, I endow the
phenomena with a false awareness that it does not have in the first place.
An example from my early years: I
remember a time when I was struggling to adopt a certain belief system that
didn’t fit well with me in my early twenties. And it just so happened one night
as I was wrestling with it, I had tasted some kind of special flavored rice
that I had never had before, while I was preoccupied with a decision I had to
make regarding what belief to commit to. I unconsciously associated the struggle
and indecision with the taste of this rice, and linked the taste with the
struggles I had. The struggle became interwoven with the taste of this food,
even though that taste had nothing to do with the struggle itself. But in my
mental state, I endowed the rice with the qualities of confusion that were
really deep in the mind. I am sure that many people might have had this
experience before, where they could not separate their confusion from the qualities
of the experience they are having. What’s more, many people try to remove the
confusion by removing things they associate with that confusion. I might start
to think that eating the rice lead me to feel confused, when this is not so! Or
I might begin to think that not eating rice will clear the confusion, or eating
a different kind of rice might do the same. In other words, I try to seek
causes for my confusion in the phenomena itself, not realizing that the
phenomena do not have the necessary awareness to resolve my confusion. In doing
so, people try to alter the contents of
the dream in order to awaken from the dream and resolve confusion. Does this ever
work?
I guess what this means is that I cannot
appeal to the elements of the dream for an answer to the ultimate existential
questions, “what is life? Who am I? And what am I here for? Why this body? Why
this dream?” All the phenomena can do is point to the resolution of the dream,
to know the source of the dream isn’t separate from the dream itself. And the
dream is just like a knot on a string, a form of stringiness that isn’t
separate from ultimate stringiness.
But I feel that this is okay.
Because when I stop expecting those answers to be revealed through grasping
onto phenomena, I can pay greater attention to what allows phenomena to exist
in the first place. And this already can be a way of calming the turbulent
dream, because I am no longer struggling and engaging with that dream to obtain
so many unreal things to which I assign meanings.
The Surangama Sutra: With Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable
Master Hssuan Hua. A New Translation
(2009) Buddhist Text Translation Society.
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