One day you will suddenly shatter this mass of doubt and realize that the term birth and death is useless garbage! (Master Boshan, in Master Sheng Yen, Attaining the Way, p.7-8)
Why, after so much inquiry into this great doubt, would birth and death suddenly seem useless or even powerless? It's one thing to see these terms "birth" and "death" in terms of a definitional meaning, but it's another to see their real significance. When something is "born" it means that something distinguishes itself from the rest of the world--it comes into being and then it disappears again into death. But from the perspective of mind, because all phenomena are of the mind, nothing is separate, and everything is only different by convention. We need names, words, and definitions to navigate the world, but when we understand the world as having a literal "substance" separate from our awareness, we imagine all kinds of things that aren't so real. Our story is what we hang onto the world to keep it coherent, but when we believe our stories exist independently of ourselves, we create all kinds of notions of birth and death.
We think something comes into the world, then disappears. If it's something we like, we don't want it to disappear, so grasping and clinging arise. If it's something we dislike, we hasten its exit, giving rise to vexation, anger, and aversion. We can't see that the good and bad are just labels we affix to all the events, and shadows start to take on solid appearances, giving rise to even more anxiety and vexation. When we interact with others, we take the other person's body to be themselves, and we can't separate the person from the body. The body becomes an object of craving and desire. Both are marks or phenomena, but what's the mind that originates the phenomena? This is happening all the time, whether conscious or not. Unless we see the root cause, we only substitute one object for another, as when I take coffee in order to reduce my addiction to something else.
Perhaps we can contemplate, in what way are these projections merely conventional, and when do they become "garbage" of the mind? When do they block up the system and prevent us from seeing clearly?
When people are educated and acquire culture, they may become overly focused on the power of thought and the significance of symbols, thereby neglecting the most important aspect of sensory experience: the genuine connection to life and interpersonal relationships.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, philosophy deals with the matters of life and death.