The Emptiness of Mind

From: Complete Enlightenment, by Zen Master Sheng-yen
      “The Buddha elaborates further on the transient nature of the body and mind. The body is a collection of the four elements and the six sense faculties (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind); and the mind is created by the interaction of the six sense faculties with the six sense objects (six dusts ie; what is seen, heard, snelled, tasted, felt, and thought). Everything is in a continual state of change. Thoughts unceasingly come and go; the body and its environment unceasingly interact. Arising, perishing, birth, death – everything changes…..The mind is an illusion. There is no such entity* called mind.”
      “It is important that we read and trust the Buddha’s words in the sutra, trust that the Dharma is spoken from a level of Complete Enlightenment and that the Buddha would not mislead us. The mind is false, transient…..The false mind arises from the external sense objects interaction with the sense faculties of the body. It is the interaction of sensation, body, and worldly phenomena that the idea of mind arises. Objectively speaking I am a mass with shape, contour, and color…..because human beings have a memory of experience that makes the shape familiar (we) call me a person – (but) without a mind (we) are nothing more than a mass of flesh….without a mind you cannot react to my words or to worldly phenomena….Nothing external exists independent of the mind. It is our feelings and sensations that mediate the world, but even they do so within the context of mind.”
      “Common sense leads you to say. ‘I exist.’ You believe that you have a mind and that here is an external world (which is exactly the way your mind registers it). In this external world - the world exists, other sentient beings exist, God exists. However, without your mind, there is no existence: no world, no people, no God. If you know that your own mind is false –merely a succession of uninterrupted thoughts – then all external objects are also false. To directly experience this emptiness is enlightenment.”
      “After enlightenment, we do not deny the existence of things. A rock is still a rock; it does not vanish. But (we know) there is nothing that exists continually. Everything is in constant flux. We cannot say that things continue to exist from moment to moment.”
*Parentheticals and italics are mine.

      I would like to follow up on this notion that mind is empty in-itself and that all manner or ideations, emotions, thoughts, fears, are added through the sense contacts. The idea resonates for me. In the absence of thinking how would I best describe or locate mind? It is empty; emptiness. Empty of ideation, emotion, sound, taste, and visions, as well as all judgments about any one of them in terms of like or dislike, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, etc. In the absence of the arising of this attraction/aversion process, the mind simply reflects the world as-it-is; in its isness. In short, what we are usually referring to when we use the word mind is actually the reflection of this sensory contact. The mind - in itself - is as empty as a mirror with nothing in front of it.
      I heard a teacher relate a story about her friend who was thinking about having an affair with a married man. This friend, call her Mary, was struggling a great deal with feelings of guilt and remorse that intensified every time she thought about the affair. She was literally driving herself crazy; crying, losing sleep, and neglecting her duties at work as well as her own physical health. Finally her friend said to her “But Mary, you aren’t having the affair!” “Oh,” Mary exclaimed in a moment of joyous awareness, “That’s right. I’m not - I can change things!”
      This story reminded me of times when I would find myself dreaming about some terrible thing that has happened. Perhaps something I’ve done to my friend, or a great loss due to some accident. Or I find myself in a position of being the only person who can save someone and then finding that I’ve made the wrong decision, or was too afraid to act at all. Then I wake up and realize that it was in fact, just a dream and I have the visceral experience of relief that is, I imagine, much like our friend Jane experienced.
      So it seems I am able to be comfortably at peace when I realize that the suffering I experience - the contracting, choice-numbing fear that I have so often experienced - is the result of my attachment to fleeting, ephemeral, sensory contact with the world; and that I can liberate my mind through my practice.