In the previous essay, we spoke in length on the state of partial harmonization that was espoused by Confucianism, you may now want to know more about the state of complete harmonization as mentioned by Lao Tzu or Taoism. Lao Tzu did not leave behind a lot of literature on this issue but we can borrow the knowledge of the ‘Flower Adornment Sutra’ (华严经) to give us a better understanding on this matter. ‘The Flower Adornment Sutra’ is said to be the jewel of the crown of Mahayana Buddhism and I will try my best to bring out the deep meaning of this sutra in guiding us to understand reality from the Buddhist perspective.

As mentioned several times before, one will enter an alternate state of reality (like most of us now) when we developed the concept of the self ego. Even though we are in an alternate state, we are never detached from the original state of oneness (自性/佛性) in the realm of infinity (法界); for example, a gold necklace, gold ring or gold pendent are all made from gold no matter what shape they take, and they will have to play by the rules that determine the fundamental properties of gold. As such, this alternate state which we call reality is a mimic version or the ‘shadow’ of the actual thing. But from the Buddha’s point of view, our reality is a kind of phantasmagoric mixture of what is real (自性) and distorted.

According to the sutra of ‘十二应缘’, this process of mimicking gave rise to our soul, reality and all its senses that we called ‘八识五十一心所’. In the previous essay, I have briefly mentioned about how we mimic our real nature (自性/佛性) with moral behavior, logic, music, arts, food, sex and etcetera, in order to help us gain a temporary equilibrium. The reason is because once we developed and hold on to the idea of a self ego, we are straddling two opposites - we wanted to hold on to the independent self ego on one hand but at the same time we can’t denounce our very fundamental state of oneness, like how a gold ring will behave according to the properties of gold. As a result, we needed something extra to help us straddle the opposites and this something extra gave rise to an alternate reality which we called ‘八识五十一心所’ which created the cycle of rebirth and everything contained in it.

Let me explain the above with an analogy, let’s say for example the ‘自性/佛性’ is Jackie Chan and I wanted to make movies like Jackie Chan but I can’t be like him because I wanted to hold on to my independent self identity. So I will need a lot of extra elements in order to make a mimic version of his movies; maybe I will need to use many stuntmen and computer effects to help me do the fight scenes and generate excitement, hire heavy weight female celebrities to be my sidekicks so that I can look macho like Jackie, and perhaps also hire top comedians to help me achieve the comedy effects when I film my own ‘Rush Hour 4’. Jackie have all these elements on his own while I need a lot of additional elements like stuntmen and computer effects to mimic him, and you can think of all these additional elements and tools of mimicking as the ‘八识五十一心所’ and cycle of rebirth or the ‘big bang’.

Before I go any further I must stress that these analogies are for illustration purposes only and I am not linked to any political interests, business associations or fan clubs in order to prevent readers from reading any alternate meanings in my essay. The dharma concept contained is very deep and readers will misunderstood or lose focus if they let their minds drift into another reality. I wrote all these essays for the various schools of Chinese philosophy because many masters find it hard to motivate followers these days and I though perhaps if I can find deeper meanings or deliver the messages in a different way then perhaps it could help. Cultivation or mind training is like burning the excess fat in our bodies, if we keep doing the same set of exercise, the fat tissue will become resistant to the effort of burning them. Similarly, I believe if the mind keeps listening to the same thing then it too can develop numbness to resist changes (improvement or decline) done to it.

That is the analogy, I believe the actual thing is something like this according to my understanding of the sutra of ‘十二应缘’; the moment the self ego (the concept of ‘I’) emerge, one will lose access to all the characteristics of the Buddha hood such as being omnipresent, all knowing, all embracing (compassionate), omnipotent and eternal life and peace. However, since the nature of the Buddha hood is the most fundamental form of existence, the self ego can’t detach from it but neither can it revert back because it is holding on to its new found independent identity (like me and Jackie Chan in the analogy). As a result the self ego is caught in between or like what I said ‘纠结’ in the previous essay and start searching for a way out by developing a new neuron circuit to bypass a blockage (纠结) in the original circuit. I believe this ability to search for a bypass is the ability of ‘分别’ which is derived from the original ability of ‘妙观察智’, and when the self ego has found an alternate neuron circuit to give him a fake temporary equilibrium, like me using stuntmen to mimic Jackie Chan, it will feel relieve and it will get fixated (执着) with these extra elements because they can provide a temporary equilibrium.

At this early stage, the process of ‘分别, 执着’ to search for an alternative equilibrium does not mean the self ego actually search the entire universe for the missing piece in its life, it actually made belief something from nothing to fill up its void and Buddhist call this making belief as ‘一切唯心造’ in the ‘Flower Adornment Sutra’; for example, we made belief time to mimic the sensation of eternity and space to mimic the state of omnipresence.

I have already explained the principles behind the creation of time, and space is created in a similar way because space and time are just different manifestation of the same thing. So when the notion of self is created, the idea of ‘somethingness’ is created and the idea of ‘nothingness’ is also created at the same time to give meaning to ‘somethingness’. Then you think of ‘somethingness’ as a mirror to your left and ‘nothingness’ as a mirror to the right side of your brain, like the ‘镜灯’ in the Flower Adornment Sutra I mentioned in a previous essay. When both the mirror face each other, you will see images of an infinite row of mirror within mirror created when reflection bounce of each mirror; and when you combine the images in both the mirrors into one you will get the ‘depth of field’ illusion like how the combination of visions from both the right and left eyes give us the depth of field. This depth of field is the illusion of space, and together with time, is created by the interaction between ‘somethingness’ and ‘nothingness’.

You may say, this interaction is all inside the brain of the self ego, what is the point of combining both the left and right vision to create an outward projection of space. The reason being, the self ego is feeling constricted when it is caught between its ‘纠结’, and it needs to dream up space and an animated body of itself moving around in the space in order to mimic the state of omnipresence. Have you ever seen animals kept in confine places like cages in zoos or in pet shops pacing themselves continuously from left to right? They do so because they are trying to cope with their unbearable stress of confinement by dreaming up an animated version of themselves walking freely in the park or forest, and this is what I meant by saying the self ego makes an outward projection of space and an animated version of itself roaming in the space.

With this understanding of reality we can explain a supernatural phenomenon Buddha demonstrated to His disciples. It is recorded in one of the sutras that when one of His disciples asked Him where is His Buddha Land (佛刹土), the Buddha lowered his foot to touch the ground and made His Buddha Land appeared right in front of everyone, then the Buddha said, “It is here, right in front of you.” We have heard that usually the Buddha lands like ‘西方极乐世界’ and ‘华藏世界’ are situated billions of light years away, so how is it that a place situated billions of light years away can also be right in front of us? The reason is that this immense billions of light years of space is only from our perspective because they are created when we are still caught in the dream chamber of ‘镜灯’.

We go back to the example of the pet shop, assuming the animated version of the animal roaming in the park somehow saw us in the shop, then it will see us as being separated by a distance of several kilometers, however, when it stopped dreaming, it will see us standing right in front of its glass cage. We too, are animated or holographic projections from a source in the ‘法界’ and we are separated from it by billions of light years of space we dream up when in actual fact it is only right in front of us.

I believe this conundrum can be explained by the science of super symmetry which claims that all our 90 billion light years of space is actually contained in a medium (a mirror) which is no thicker than a piece of paper. That is why in reality, we are only separated from the Buddha land by the thickness of a piece of paper and why the Buddha said that the Buddha Land is actually right in fron of us. As long as we are enchanted by the endless reflected images of the mirrors of somethingness and nothingness, time will keep moving forward and space will keep on expanding.

We now look at other major forms of alternate reality like creation and procreation, which in my opinion is to mimic the Buddha nature of everyone is everyone and eternal existence. Oneness is when you are already everyone and everything and therefore one is always peaceful and contented, and there is no need to seek out anything (food or material possession) or anyone. When the self ego is out of touch with oneness, it will cope with this state of anomaly by splitting itself into yin and yang in the alternate reality to create the sensation of having or being with someone. This sensation of having someone is to mimic the state of oneness where everyone is part of everyone. As such, Taoist are very particular with keeping a balance between the yin (nothingness) and yang (somethingness) because if not the frames or time and space will not move forward and become stagnant or unable to mimic the Buddha nature of oneness. That is why we keep procreating or giving birth to new babies to enable a part of us to live on eternally and having a big family tree or becoming members of a larger community in order to resemble oneness of everyone. Not only do human has the urge to procreate something, we saw in movies that even advance extraterrestrial and sentient beings in higher dimensions also have the same urge to tweak with DNA or make new inventions.

It is also for this reason that the different branches of Buddhism created the various methods of cultivation, that are based on the foundation of ‘戒定慧’, such as moral behavior, meditation and dharma studies for the purpose of mimicking the oneness of the Buddha nature in order to lead us into the real thing.

Another major enabler of alternate reality is of course our eight senses (八识) and I believe they are created to mimic the all knowing and omnipotent characteristics of the Buddha nature (自性/佛性). Our eyes, ears, taste, smell and tactile senses are all used as tools to channel information to our brain which are then processed by the sixth and seventh senses of ‘分别, 执着’ and finally stored in the eighth sense of ‘阿赖耶识’. When one is in the realm of Nirvana, one will experience a perpetual delightful and beautiful bliss, but loses it when one switched to the self ego mode. The self ego will then create all kinds of beautiful sensation to achieve an alternate parity to the delightful and beautiful Buddha nature. When the self ego is still very pure at the early stage, it can generate these beautiful mimic sensations at will; it can transubstantiate or dream up beautiful sceneries, music ,art, objects or maybe even life forms as it pleases. If it wishes to see something beautiful, beautiful things will appear, and if it wishes to listen to beautiful sounds, sweet music will be heard just like the lyrics, ‘看似一幅画听像一首歌’ in the song ‘小城故事’. I doubt the consciousness of the self ego would want to see ugly or vulgar things at the early stage when it is still very pure and free from too many obstacles (障碍) or distortions.

Students of the sutra ‘十二应缘’ should be clear by now how and why new sensation, cognitive processes and emotions like the ‘五十一心所’ are created over time - they are all created as tools to enable the self ego to mimic the ‘自性/佛性’. For example, the emotion of joy (喜/乐) one gets from say appreciating the beautiful scenery is meant to mimic certain positive virtues of ‘自性/佛性’, however, these emotions are dualistic by nature and that means anything nice will have an ugly side to it. When the ugly side of watching beautiful scenery sets in, blockage will be formed and it probably takes the form of boredom and one will start to develop the sense of smell to smell the aroma of flowers, and then the sense of hearing is created to hear the chirping of the birds and the whole process will continue to grow into more intense and obsessive sensations. Then, greed (贪) is created to hold on to this temporary parity and once we lost it, hate (嗔) might set in to motivate one to recover the lost, or sorrow (悲) to lead one to seek an alternative.

We have to be careful not to think that since good things have bad sides then bad things like anger or hate will have good sides to them. We must know that emotions like hate or anger are used to perhaps belittle others and that means one uses them to make gains, and when the gain is over the pain will set in.

Another way to explain the ability to create by transubstantiation in more scientific terms is perhaps through the ‘double slit experiment’. The experiment shows us that when we are not measuring or observing material, they exist in the form of waves, but once we observe them they will turn into particles. It means that our consciousness can determine what we see or get, and that is why when we are very pure like mentioned above, our consciousness is powerful enough to will things into existence. I guess if we can somehow get an Angel or heavenly sentient beings to participate in the ‘double slit experiment’, maybe the nature of the particles they observe is different from those observed by humans.

That is why, if I am correct on this, students of Mahayana Buddhism are often reminded that ‘emptiness’ (空性) is actually our ‘自性/佛性’ which has the ability to generate our reality and all its contents. As a result, when we get in touch with ‘emptiness’ through ‘都摄六根’, the focus is to dissolve our inner ‘八识五十一心所’ instead of eliminating external elements. The external reality is created when we are deluded and misuse our ‘自性/佛性’ to make toys and shadows to help us get a temporary equilibrium, misusing it a little will give us heaven and misusing it a lot will give us hell. So, eliminating the external does not cure the internal, doing so may even eliminate us because the external reality is part of our own ‘自性/佛性’.

Basing on my understanding so far, I conclude that if we wanted to practice moral and restraint through controlling the ‘五十一心所’, we must also dissolve ‘分别’, ‘执着’ and the ‘阿赖耶识’ to eradicate the self ego and move closer to our natural state of oneness. If not we will be stuck in a very conflicted situation and become either very dry or extreme because we can’t utilize its ability to mimic oneness.

P.S., Blockages or stagnation do not just come from conflicts, they can also come from deep impression of trauma and euphoria which prevent our thoughts from moving forward or they can originate from karma which is a discrepancy in the balance of energies.