TUESDAY, FEB 2, 2021: NOTE TO FILE
The One Mind
Huangbo meets Schrödinger
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha [Mind] and sentient beings." —Huangbo Xiyun, early 9th century CE.
“The total number of minds in the universe is one." —Erwin Schrödinger
TOPICS: EAST IS EAST, FROM THE WIRES, THE NOT TWO
Abstract: There are as many things as the concept forming mind conceives. They exist nowhere else. Before the What-is, all concepts of it fall short.
COOS BAY (A-P) — Implied is that the apparent multiplicity of minds, that of all sentient beings on Earth or anywhere else in the universe, is just an illusion and that there is only one mind, or one consciousness, that expresses itself in a myriad of ways and forms. In such a world view, a separation between subject and object does not exist, there is no existence of a subject (self) on the one side and perception of an object (other) on the other. In a world without the subject-object split, we are all an expression of the One Mind apart from which not a thing is.
We are storytelling animals, e.g. 'when I wake up from sleep, I open my eyes and sometimes I close them'. Or, when organisms having eyes that can close awaken from sleep, eyes open and close.The entity that opens and closes the eyes is as imagined by a storytelling, concept forming mind. The persistant belief in the entity (self) is an illusion created by the pathology of belief-based cognition.
Water goes over a falls and drops arise having a 'separate' existence, for a time, but all are the flow they soon reform as none are by nature separate or permanent. Human minds persist longer and add the illusion of permanence. Some imagine they persist after individuated existence passes. The lack of separateness or permanence is the what-is, of all that could be. Protons have a better claim to permanence, but even they will not dance forever, some to form dissipative structures like adaptive whirlwinds and evolvable humans.
The fundamental idea is that there is no separation of self and other, that ego is an illusion. The amoeba mind is simple: blob about... food? Engulf it. Toxic? Avoid it. Corporations are simple minded too: blob about the globe... profitable? Take/Do it. Constraining/prohibited? Avoid/overcome it.
Are amoebas and corporations conscious? Barely. Are plants, given their tropisms? Yes. Are corvids smarter than humans? Maybe. If it helps the species to persist, corvids do it. If it feels good, humans do it, believe it, repeat it for a time (e.g. doing drugs, growing the economy). Making many nuanced discriminations, as humans are wont to do, is not a difference in kind.
Is there another word for the One Mind or consciousness? Yes, information.
Discriminating between eatable/uneatable is mind in action. A mind that contains correct information engulfs what is eatable, and not what is toxic. All amoeboid minds, on any planet, endeavor to know, and those who fail pass away, giving raise to the amoeba One Mind all amoeba minds iterate towards because that is what works to persist. All other minds are merely more complex, but their consciousness too is selected for by the universe within which are minds; all iterate towards knowing and thereby persisting in it, though brains come and go. All minds are subject to error, to not being passed on, but the total number is one.
The implication is that the 'I' as an individual is a convenient fiction of storytelling minds. The 'I' quickly melts away when not thought about. Individuals may believe themselves to be a separate, a clinically pure entity, even an ensouled permanent one, but there are no true stories.
In truth, all minds are manifestations of the One Mind as information subsystem having no permanent or separate existence. In the interaction of subsystems, ‘the other’ is also an expression of the one information system.
It becomes clear that this vision has deep existential implications and affects the way one sees everyday life, providing an acute sense of the interconnectedness and wholeness implicate in all life as genetic and memetic information subsystems, in whatever form they may appear. In line with Schrödinger’s basic tenet, we are simply all a part of one system, a subsystem of subsystems within subsystems, at one with the one web of life in the unosphere.
For the last ten thousand years or so, humans have come to live in, serve, be products of complex societies that tell stories drawn from a sea of error, ignorance, and illusion all information sybsystems are prone to. And empires of hubris may exist: FOR A TIME. We will come to tell better stories or go extinct because our stories are incompatable with What-is.
You should doubt more what you think than what you see.
Be less impressed by what you think than what you see before you.
Behold the One Mind before whom all beliefs recoil.
See system over self.
There exists just the One Mind.
Here it is - right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.
Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people.
Away with your dualism, your likes and dislikes. Every single thing is just One Mind.
Why seek a doctrine? As soon as you have a doctrine, you fall into dualistic thought.
...concepts are related to the senses; and, when feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out.
By the dharma is meant the heart-mind, for there is no dharma apart from the heart-mind.
Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.
When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.
To make use of your mind to think conceptually is to leave substance and attach yourself to form.
People are scared to empty their minds fearing that they will be engulfed by the void. What they don't realize is that their own mind is the void.
Our original nature is...void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy - and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awakening yourself.
A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious understanding; and by this understanding you will awaken to the truth.
All Buddhas and ordinary people are just Mind. This Mind is beyond all measurements, names, oppositions: this very being is it; as soon as you stir your mind you turn away from it.
On seeing one thing, you see all things. On perceiving an individual's mind, you perceive all Mmind. Glimpse one truth, and all Truth is present in your vision, for there is nowhere at all that is devoid of the Truth.
Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.
'Studying the Way' is just a figure of speech, a method of arousing people's interest in the early stages of their development. In fact, the Tao is not something which can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts, and so the Way is entirely misunderstood.
Consider the sunlight. You may say that it is near, yet if you pursue it from world to world you will never catch it. You may say it is far, yet it is right before your eyes. Chase it and it always eludes you; run from it and it is always there. From this example you can understand how it is with the true nature of things.
As soon as the mouth is opened, evils spring forth. People either neglect the root and speak of the branches, or neglect the reality of the 'illusory' world and speak only of Enlightenment. Or else they chatter of cosmic activities leading to transformations, while neglecting the Substance from which they spring—indeed, there is NEVER any profit in discussion.
The nature of the Absolute is neither perceptible nor imperceptible; and with phenomena it is just the same. But to one who has discovered his real nature, how can there be anywhere or anything separate from it?... Therefore it is said: 'The perception of a phenomenon IS the perception of the Universal Nature, since phenomena and Mind are one and the same.'
—Huangbo
