Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia Series in Science and Religion) by Wallace B. Alan & Hodel Brian

Author:Wallace, B. Alan & Hodel, Brian [Wallace, B. Alan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2007-02-23T02:00:00+00:00

SETS OF FIVE

If the essential nature of each sentient being and the universe as a whole is infinite, luminous space, endowed with all the qualities of perfect enlightenment, why is this not realized? Samantabhadra explains that the reality of all phenomena arising as displays of the all-pervasive ground awareness is obscured by ignorance. Consequently, the tathāgatagarbha, which utterly transcends all words and concepts—including the very notions of existence and nonexistence, one and many, and subject and object—is experientially reduced to a blank, unthinking void, which is known as the substrate (ālaya). The experience of this void is comparable to becoming comatose or falling into dreamless sleep, totally lacking in content. From that state arises limpid, clear consciousness as the basis from which all phenomena appear, and that is the substrate consciousness (ālayavijñāna). No objects are established apart from its own luminosity, and while it produces all types of appearances, it does not enter into any object. Just as reflections of the planets and stars appear in limpid, clear water and the entire animate and inanimate world appears in limpid, clear space, so do all appearances appear in the empty, clear, universal ground consciousness.

From that state arises the consciousness of the mere appearance of the self. The self, or “I,” is apprehended as being “here,” so the objective world seems to be “over there,” thus establishing the appearance of space. To relate this evolution of the universe to the obscuration of the previously mentioned five facets of primordial consciousness, it is said that ignorance initially obscures the inner glow of one’s innate, primordial consciousness of the absolute space of reality, which causes an external transference of its radiance. As this evolutionary process continues, the five types of primordial consciousness transform into the five great elements and the five derivative elements in the following way:

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