(Update Pending)
In this post, we verify the adventitious relationship between enlightenment and unenlightenment.
As discussed when introducing a few fundamental concepts, in the Astasahasrika-Prajnaparamita-Sutra (Chinese=道行般若波羅蜜經), Buddha defines enlightenment as “the thought of enlightenment is no thought since in its essential original nature thought is transparently luminous.”
As discussed when introducing non-luminosity as the conscious quantum realm, in the Aṅguttara Nikāya (Chinese=增一阿含經), Buddha stated, “The mind, O monks, is luminous, but defiled by adventitious defilements.”
Given that Buddha teaches that enlightenment means “no thought” and is luminous, and represents a quiescent mind, defilement must mean that the mind becomes active, thus losing its luminosity. Hence, the active mind is unenlightened, and can be called non-luminosity (Romanized Sanskrit=tamasa; Chinese=無明).
Since the Buddha defines defilement as adventitious, the relationship between an enlightened and an unenlightened mind must satisfy the two conditions that define adventitiousness.
- Association by Chance: If two events are associated by chance in Buddhism, it necessarily means that there is no causal relationship between them. In other words, an enlightened mind cannot cause enlightenment, nor can unlightenment be caused by enlightenment.
- Extrinsic: An extrinsic relationship means that the enlightened mind must exist separately from the unenlightened mind.
Since non-luminosity is the conscious version of the fluctuating quantum field, we will first explore if scientists can establish an adventitious relationship between a fluctuating quantum field and a quantum field where there are no fluctuations.
In a previous post, we discussed that, according to quantum field theory, “empty space is not empty” is “the simplest thing you could possibly imagine in the universe” because a space without fluctuations does not exist in it. Furthermore, even after scientists attempted to remove everything from it, quantum field fluctuations stubbornly remained. In other words, not only does a space without quantum field fluctuations not exist naturally in the universe, but it can also not be created.
In this video, “Empty Space is Not Empty,” quantum scientist Dr. Derek Leinweber discusses the results of just such an experiment when he tried to create a domain without fluctuations. As a premise for his experiment, he proposed a hypothetical space devoid of quantum energy fluctuations, which he referred to as an “empty vacuum.”
To his disappointment, Dr. Leinweber’s experimental results led him to acknowledge that an “empty vacuum without fluctuations actually costs an enormous amount of energy to create.” “And if you were able to create it, you’d discover that it is actually unstable. Any sort of perturbation would push that empty vacuum into something where the vacuum is actually full of quantum fluctuations.”
In Buddha’s three-body cosmos, there is no quantum energy; only quantum mentality exists. Moreover, as discussed previously, in Buddha’s mental universe where there is Nothing but Mentality, everything that exists exists in the human mind. Therefore, confirming the adventitious relationship between enlightenment and unenlightenment can be done through the mind of an enlightened person.
As discussed in The Three Delicate Marks (Chinese=三細相), unenlightenment comes along with having consciousness. Since all humans are born conscious, they are also born unenlightened. Indeed, like “an empty space is not empty”, an unenlightened mind is the simplest thing in any person’s mind because it is always active and full of mental fluctuations.
Like Dr. Leinweber’s scientific experiment, trying to create a quiescent mind also “costs an enormous amount of energy.” As Adyashanti said, achieving enlightenment required considerable personal effort and took more than a decade. And he is the lucky one. Many more had tried for much longer, but never got enlightened.
In that way, an enlightened individual can prove the two conditions that adventitious defines:
- Associated by Chance. That an unenlightened mind cannot cause enlightenment is quite apparent. Throughout human history, there has never been a recorded case of someone suddenly becoming enlightened with or without apparent reason. That enlightenment cannot cause unenlightenment is also quite obvious: no enlightened person has ever complained about losing enlightenment without reason, either.
- Extrinsic: That enlightenment and unenlightenment are extrinsic is obvious because no human mind can simultaneously be quiescent and active at the same time. A person can either be in a state of enlightenment by having a quiescent mind, or they can be in a state of unenlightenment with an active mind. Enlightenment and unenlightenment cannot coexist at the same time because a mind cannot be quiescent and active at the same time.
Enlightenment is difficult because human minds move so quickly that calming them to a state of stillness is exceptionally challenging.
As mentioned when discussing epiphenomena, Buddha’s “neighbor-to-emptiness dust (Chinese=鄰虛塵) is equivalent to quarks in science. They are comparable because the speeds of their annihilations are similar. While Buddha describes the speed of the annihilations of the “neighbor-to-emptiness dusts” as “born here, annihilated same here (Chinese=當處出生，隨處滅盡),” the speed of annihilations of quarks is similarly fast at “one million billion billion billion frameworks per second.”
The difference between “neighbor-to-emptiness dust” and quark is that while “neighbor-to-emptiness dust” fluctuates in mentality, a quark fluctuates in the quantum energy field. Because “neighbor-to-emptiness dust” fluctuates in mentality, their annihilation speed is a measure of conscious thoughts going in and out of existence.
In the Sutra of the Bodhisattva in the Placenta (菩薩處胎經), Buddha asked Bodhisattva Maitreya, “a bodhisattva who is regarded as the future Buddha of this world in all schools of Buddhism,” “When the mind thinks, how many thoughts, how many forms, and how many consciousnesses are there?” Bodhisattva Maitreya answers, “At the snap of a finger, there are three billion two hundred million and one hundred thousand thoughts; every thought takes a form, and all forms are conscious.” (Chinese=佛即問彌勒。心有所念幾念幾想幾識耶。彌勒言。拍手彈指之頃。三十二億百千念。念念成形。形皆有識.“
While there are debates on how fast humans can snap their fingers, even if one snaps one’s finger only one or two times a second, the speed of thoughts at “three billion two hundred million and one hundred thousand thoughts” per second would be fast enough to qualify Buddha’s description, “born here, annihilated same here.”
While it is true that slowing one’s thoughts from such a high speed to zero to achieve enlightenment can be done, the fact that it is a challenging task must also be acknowledged. That is why many have tried, but only a few people have become enlightened. On the other hand, the reward of enlightenment is monumental. Becoming enlightened eliminates the afflictive obstructions of the person, allows one to become an Arhat (Chinese=阿羅漢), be forever freed from cycles of ‘determinative birth-and-death (Romanized Sanskrit=paricchedajaramarana; Chinese=分段生死),’ thereby no longer subject to the samsara of orginary sentient beings, who must take rebirth within the three realms of existence (Romanized Sanskrit=traidhatuka; Chinese=三界), or the six destinations of rebith (Romanized Sanskrit=gati, Chinese=六道/趣).
However, the great significance of the dialogue between Bodhisattva Maitreya, who resided in Tushita (Chinese: 兜率天), a celestial realm, and the future Buddha, who spoke while still in the womb, extends far beyond the speed of human thought. Its significance lies in the fact that the short dialogue informs us about the most mysterious step in the human sensing process, known as “conceptualization in ways we do not govern.”
In his discussion on Inference: How Do We Know What We Know, Dr. Fisch said that humanity’s interactions with the world consist of the following steps.
- “The world impacts on us in a causal manner through all our senses.”
- “The content imparted on those stimuli is the reading-in of the mind.”
- “The content gets fashioned and conceptualized by our minds in ways that we do not govern.“
- “Sitting in the command room of our minds with the inner eyes and looking out.”
- “Seeing on the screen the world that we experience.”
Using human observation as an example of sensing, the first step of the human observation process begins with the conscious waves carrying information embedded in the mental construct of phenomena of the world impacting the visual consciousness of the eyes. After that interaction, the second step requires the content of the information carried by the conscious waves to become “reading in of the mind.” This is followed by the third step, which is that the contents get conceptualized “in ways we do not govern.”
Bodhisattva Maitreya’s statement that “there are three billion two hundred million and one hundred thousand thoughts” refers to the fact that when the information content becomes the “reading in” of the mind, it is met by “three billion two hundred million and one hundred thousand thoughts” at the snap of a finger.
To understand the statement that “every thought takes a form, and all forms,” we must realize that “form,” together with “body and materiality,” is the definition of rupa. As discussed in many previous posts, all rupas are epiphenomena. “All forms are conscious” is an indication that all Buddha’s epiphenomena, beginning with “neighbor-to-emptiness dust,” are all conscious.
In other words, “Every thought takes a form” is a clear indication that the conscious waves, through which the world impacts our senses, have become their epiphenomena. As discussed when discussing the Observer Effect, while epiphenomena and their waves are the same, they differ in their visibility: epiphenomena are visible, but the waves are invisible to humans.
This is the meaning of “conceptualization in ways we do not govern.” Conceptualization changes the invisible waves impacting our eyes into something Buddha deems “the medium of an image.” That it happens to everyone every time they look out the window without their knowledge and control is the reason why it happens in ways “in ways we do not govern.“
After the conceptualization, the conscious mind then projects “the medium of image” to be “seen” as the “world we experience,” which are descriptions of Dr. Fisch. It is why Buddha calls the world we experience “mere projections of consciousness.”
As mere projections of consciousness, the “world we experience” is illusional. When conceptualization cannot happen, there would be no world and no universe because there would be no projections of consciousness.
As discussed earlier, any enlightened individuals, such as Adyashanti and the two Chinese monks, can also confirm the vanishing of the universe upon their enlightenment.
However, as the example of the dialogue between Bodhisattva Maitreya and Buddha shows, the power of direct perception far exceeds the confirmation of the illusion of the universe, as it solves another mystery that is unsolvable through inference.
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