Illusory Analogies

  I continue with my thoughts on key phrases of the Lankavatara Sutra:

"The world  as seen by discrimination is like seeing one's own image reflected in a mirror, or one's shadow, or the moon reflected in water, or an echo heard in the valley. People grasping their own shadows of discrimination become attached to this thing and that thing and failing to abandon dualism they go on forever discriminating and thus never attain tranquility" (p.2).'

As I am reading his passage, I am reflecting on how easy it is to become absorbed in a simple thing like moving images. Television, commercials, and even the fashion of celebrities at the latest gala events, attract our eyes, to the point where we become "glued" to the screen and even track celebrities' movements through tabloids and the media at large. We project onto these images various qualities, feelings and personality traits that the person may or may not necessarily possess. I imagine that if I were this person, I would be so much happier than.. and so on. Most of the images are endowed with imagination, in a way that's similar to how a balloon is filled with air. The size and shape of the balloon are determined by how much air we put into it, and not the substance of the balloon itself (which turns out to be quite small, when deflated).

The problem is about "discrimination". The heart of discrimination is dividing the world into "this body" and "that world". The mind then goes through a process where it labels everything according to its likes and dislikes, seeking and rejecting, until the world comes to resemble things that possess the values we internally project onto them. A snake becomes something associated with cunning, rebellion and evil, when in fact, it possesses similar faculties to other animals. It is ourselves that sees the snake this way and then starts to believe it really has those qualities.

When we are very happy with someone, we might elevate them to the point of divinity, only to find later that they disappointed our expectations. When we are angry with someone, we might demonize them, to the point where a mistake escalates into a very distorted view of the person. Why does this happen? The mind fails to see that the original thoughts from which these ideas originated are quite fleeting. We may have all experienced times when a person we are angry with is seen 'in a better light' over time because their behavior changed, or we gain insight into why their original behavior annoyed us. In other words, the "person" is not composed of past thoughts or ideas. The person is a living and thriving set of interconnections. The Diamond Sutra goes even further to suggest that person, living being, self and soul are not actually real entities, but are only labels we assign to passing phenomena that don't form a cohesive substance or whole. Only because we associate thoughts over time do we have notions of things existing over time and independently of thoughts and mind.

When we really become aware of the fleeting nature of our thoughts, then we lose our assumptions about our present experience, and have an easier time to see the real nature of thoughts without being stuck on them.