Tue, 03 Aug 2010
Levels of Mind
Since enlightenment is seeing the mind as it is, to understand enlightenment, you have to understand a bit about what Buddhists think mind is. The ideas of Asanga have been influential, both in Tibetan Buddhism and in Zen, so I will explain his ideas. First, although I talk about mind, In Buddhism mind is more of an activity or a process than a thing. The best word would be mentation, I suppose. Mind is more streams of activities. There are three levels of mind. The first is the outer facing stream of perceptions and ideas. Behind that is the false self, what we normally take to be ourselves, but is actually nothing more than a pattern of thought, a habitual way of looking at ourselves and the world. And behind the false self is what's known as the warehouse consciousness (alaya). Normally we aren't aware of the alaya consciousness, so it's hard to describe. One analogy is that it's like the light bulb in a film projector. The film represents our constantly changing perceptions and thoughts, the alaya is like the relatively constant light that shines through it.
What gets called enlightenment, in both Buddhism and other religious traditions, is seeing this basic mind. It's a bit confusing when you try to correlate this with Buddhist scriptures and commentaries, because what's described there as enlightenment is a more advanced state. And I will have more to say about that later. The chief obstacle to seeing the alaya consciousness is our misconception of who we are (our false self) obscures it. Meditation helps by stilling our thoughts. When thoughts are stilled, so are our misconceptions, and what is really there stands out clearly. Meditation does not produce enlightenment, instead it allows us to get it. Strictly speaking, meditation is neither necessary or sufficient for enlightenment. But it is the surest route to it, but a long one, because it takes a good while to quiet our thoughts.
