Integration

  We often try to do well for ourselves by climbing a ladder: leaving behind the bad in favor of the good. I would suggest a different approach, which is to integrate disowned elements of the self.

   Platform Sutra talks about the sentient beings that exist within us:

Learned Audience, to take refuge in a true Buddha is to take refuge in our own Essence of Mind. He who does so should remove from his Essence of Mind the evil mind, the jealous mind, the flattering and crooked mind, egotism, deceit and falsehood, contemptuousness, snobbishness, fallacious views, arrogance, and all other evils that may arise at any time. (p.60)

When I read this passage, I reflect on how we contain all of these different elements of sentient beings. There isn't a single thing that a person has done, thought, felt, etc. that does not also reflect within ourselves. When I react to someone else, I create in my mind the idea of that person's motivation, and then reject that person for their perceived motivation. But what I am rejecting is really my own creation, since we can never truly know a person's mind. At most, we can guess, but beyond that, our guesses are based on our own train of thought. So we create cloud beings out of our mind that, at most, are only shadowy things that have no real substance.

Subduing or removing all these selves requires love and equanimity. Love: we accept and take in all these elements as parts of the same mind, just like the waves are parts of the same ocean. We don't separate or cast our one wave. Instead, we treat them all as just different forms. Even if we cannot embrace all these different forms, perhaps we can see that they are potentials that lie within all of us, which can emerge from many complex conditions. At the very least, we can cultivate the humility to know that what we don't like about someone is a seed that is within us. We can choose to accept that what we dislike is only temporary and arises from conditions.

Second is about equanimity. Having a balanced view allows all those states of mind that are unwholesome and partial to arise without taking over the show. To identify too closely with those elements of mind is to become imprisoned to them. They become compulsions rather than being integrated elements within the whole. 

Lastly, I try to observe deeply the mind that beholds all these elements. Is that mind inseparable from these mental states, or do the mental states only pass through mind as a function? Staying in that sense of mind can allow us not to become entangled in the sub-personalities. 

When I let go of clinging, naturally they liberate because these sub-personalities were always pure to begin with. It's like imagining that our toy soldiers were really "real", only to find that they were only real because we made them to be real through our imaginations.

The Sutra of Hui Neng. H.K Buddhist Book Distribution Press.