The week ends as of today, Friday, yielding to another eventful weekend. I feel release from the work week as I settle into school assignments. I enjoy the idea of having to stay up later than usual, not being bounded by the sense of time or urgency to get sleep. My body naturally relaxes into that state of not being chained to the following day.
This evening, I was reading a section in the Surangama Sutra where Buddha expounds on the 6 knots in a scarf. The six knots seem to represent the six sense faculties (seeing, hearing, smelling, touch, tasting, consciousness), whereas the scarf is the actual mind. In this section, Buddha is explaining to Ananda how working on one knot (or one sense) will end up gradually liberating all the others, if followed in a sequence.
There is an intriguing part in this text where Buddha keeps demonstrating incorrect ways of untying the knots, such as pulling on both sides to make it tighter. Ananda finally explains to the Buddha that the only way to untie the knot is to "pull on the scarf from within each knot" (p.199). As I read this passage, I kept wondering what this means.
When I am trying to untie a knot, I often come to this similar sort of decision about how to untie it. If my mind is very agitated, I try to tug on either one side or the other of the scarf, thinking that forcing one part will cause the others to budge.This often happens when I have given up and just want something to move, not realizing in that moment that I am just making the knot tighter by reinforcing its conditions. Buddha's 'solution' is to literally reverse the way I am trying to untie: to pull the scarf gently out of the knot, rather than trying to separate scarf from its knots. This might be compared to seeing the mind in the sense itself, rather than trying to violently reject sensory experiences altogether.
I am not wholly certain if I have it right, but I think the analogy might refer to seeing the true mind in all experiences and using experience itself to see true mind. In effect, the 'knot' is just the temporary form of the scarf, and it relates to how phenomena is perceived. It doesn't have a reality of its own that can be forced apart or 'pried open'. But because my focus is on that 'ball' of folds created by the scarf, I will want to do anything to twist it out of shape, as though it were an enemy to the scarf. When I understand that all those forms are just the scarf itself, I calm myself and start to work with it as a scarf, not as a separate form. I become less fixated on getting rid of the knots, and more attentive to the totality of the scarf and its possibilities.
There are many examples of this principle in daily life. One such is the habit I have of rushing in to solve a problem, as though the problem were separate from the situation itself and its conditions. I want to cure an illness by having a surgeon 'pull it out of my body'. I might not realize that it's my body that is causing the illness, and not the physical symptom itself. But when I reflect on it, not everything need be so violent. If conditions make the knots appear, surely there may be similar conditions out there which might reverse the form of the knots. But if I try too hard to make the knot disappear by tugging at it or using some kind of physical force, I only transfer more tension and energy to the knot. Has it ever happened when a person quarrels with another person, and the energy of the argument only gets stronger? It's because the conflict is isolated and heightened. I try to engage 'the fight to end all fights', only to realize that it's my very own mental energy that is the conflict itself. I think Master Sheng Yen once said, if one does not 'fight back' with someone else, could the fight possibly continue? How can an argument even exist if I choose not to engage it? But, most of the time, I find the temptation is to use the energy of conflict to try to end conflict. This is a little bit like adding gasoline to a fire. Of course, it will probably extinguish some of the existing fire, but it will end up creating even more fire.
Another example I can think of related to this topic is how fixating on 'problems' is often a way to prolong them. It's one of the great ironies of life that when a person treats something as a problem or as a sin, they only create more temptation for others to commit that sin or keep engaging in the 'problem'. I don't really know how or why that is the case, but if I view it from the mind perspective, anything I think obsessively about is going to create that phenomena in mind. It's going to feed it, even though my intention might be to squelch it. That is why parents who emphasize not doing something often have kids who do that very thing...and often! The parent is subconsciously giving the energy of that repressed thought to the child,without realizing it.
Ananda's eventual understanding of how the knot is untied is a subtle teaching. I don't find it so easy to grasp. I might interpret the concept of 'pulling the scarf through the knot' as always starting and ending with the mind. If I am investigating the mind that is the source of the phenomena, suddenly my attention has shifted to something that can't be reduced to a single form. I can relax: whatever the solution is, it is not going to be in the things I am seeing or feeling. Pulling the scarf out means working with the mind, rather than picking and choosing: "I hate knots, so I need to remove them." If the knot is another form of the scarf, is the solution to try to remove them? What is being removed? Maybe a form, but not the scarf itself.
A third example I have is that of using the raw experience of our problems to see the mind within it. It's hard to do this, because often mind is rushing to get to a solution that will relieve me of the problem itself.This works temporarily, sometimes, but people continue to get wrapped up in one difficulty after the next. Rather than using the experience to see their mind, they are devoted to trying to resolve, or get rid of vexations, only to face more later on.
Over time, I think this mentality has lead me to associate desires with 'solutions' to problems. Whenever a problem arises, the desire arises to extinguish the problem. I become so determined to get rid of what I dislike, yet the desire to remove a situation constitutes yet another problem. It's a subtle problem because with desire, there is always the illusion that I will be content once I satisfy the desire. But life doesn't work like this!
Surangama Sutra (2009). Buddhist Text Translation Society
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