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Guided Meditation: Magic Illusions; Dharmette: The Simile of the Five Aggregates (5 of 5): Consciousness as Magic illusions - Ying Chen, 陈颖

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 12, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good day. It's good to be with you all this week. I have the sense that quietly seeing the chat messages flowing in, there is a sense of meeting you all in some mysterious ways.

We're coming to the last session of this week. For five days, we've been exploring the simile of the five Aggregates¹, and today we are culminating at the last one, which is about this aggregate of Consciousness, or the Pali term viññāṇa². The translation is consciousness. Often it's hard to know exactly what Consciousness is, and many people are still exploring and reflecting on this. I also don't know exactly what Consciousness is, and yet the Buddha is pointing out something we can know.

What I will say is that we can know there is an aspect of the human capacity that is able to know experiences in different domains. For example, you hear a sound right now and you know there is sound. Maybe you feel the temperature, and there is a Consciousness that knows that. Maybe there are some tactile sensations in the body, and there is something that knows that. There are these different domains of capacities that are able to know in this range, in these different ranges of our experience. Often in Buddhism, we speak about the six sense contacts; that's six domains of experiences that we all have. And there is this Consciousness that can spotlight on the experience and get to know the experience.

The Buddha has this mastery of using similes. He used a magician's illusions as the way to describe how this aggregate of Consciousness works. It feels like in a magician's show, they spotlight different things and then it gets lit up and you see them. They get put together in some way that captures the audience's mind. In a way, that's a little bit like how Consciousness works. It is the spotlight for our experiences to be known, and then, being a clinging aggregate, we can get pulled into them.

So we'll practice with this and then we'll explore this simile in some more detail.

Guided Meditation: Magic Illusions

Let's sit.

Coming into a meditative posture. Again, entering into this temple within, a metaphor I've been using this week. Entering the temple of this body, mind, and heart.

Just like entering into a temple, we're not in a big rush. We are arriving at the here and now with kindness, with rest. With a pace that allows us to settle.

Maybe it's this momentary mindfulness, being present with the sound, the global sense of the body sitting or lying down. There is no rush to get anywhere or to any state. One moment of mindfulness, and another, and another.

At some point, you may find yourself settling in a kind of presence, a continuous stream of mindfulness. Maybe a kind of resting in the field of knowing.

And the experiences begin to emerge from this field of knowing. Movements of the breath, sensations in the body. Being available.

The mindful knowing itself doesn't have to move. It's available.

You can start with the embodied experience. The flow of the breath is known as the flow of the breath happens, and there is also a Consciousness that can know the moving breath. It's like the spotlight lights it up.

A sound emerges. It's known. The Consciousness lit it up.

Sensations in the body are known, lit up.

Floating thoughts are known, lit up.

Ripples or waves of emotion are known and lit up.

Then drop below the narratives, the stories. Staying with the felt sense.

When you're resting in the quiet, peaceful field of mindful awareness, you can begin to feel and to see how the different sense consciousnesses are lit up. One moment of a sound to a moment of sensation, a moment of a mental activity. Like a dazzling magician's illusion, illusory.

When the mind is not pulled into a magic show, a natural disenchantment and dispassion can become available. Or maybe a sense of mind and heart resting deeper within. Quiet, peaceful, undisturbed by the movements of the heart and mind or in the body. Like still, flowing water.

Each of the five aggregates, the humanly processes that we've been exploring this week, can be seen, felt just as they are. The foaminess of the body, the water bubbles of the feelings, perceptions like a mirage, the forces of mental activities that like to construct realities, and the magician's illusions, the spotlight of the Consciousness. They are just what they are.

By seeing them as they are, we shift and change our relationships with them. We can soften and loosen up our grip, the clinging to these humanly processes, and offer our respect and care for what they are for.

Dharmette: The Simile of the Five Aggregates (5 of 5): Consciousness as Magic illusions

I'd like to read this part of the sutta, this last simile from the Samyutta Nikaya³. It says: "Suppose, practitioners, that a magician or a magician's apprentice would display a magical illusion at a crossroads. A person with good sight would inspect it, ponder it, and carefully investigate it. And it would appear to them to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance would there be in a magical illusion? So too, practitioners, whatever kind of consciousness there is, whether past, future, present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, a practitioner inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it. And it would appear to them to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance would there be in consciousness?"

I just really love these similes. I don't know what was in the Buddha's mind and how he saw these humanly processes, but the way that he's articulating them using similes is so powerful. If we just imagine ourselves in a magic show, the magicians are using all kinds of props to capture the audience's attention: sound, smell, visual, all of this. And it's in the midst of the dazzling movements that the magician creates an illusion of something. A rabbit comes out of an empty hat, or a person is cut in half in an enclosed box, etc., etc. The magicians are utilizing their understanding of some of these humanly processes to create these kinds of illusions. But for us, we know this is a magic show, so it's illusive, and we don't really believe it so much. We're just having a good time, getting captured by the effects.

This is such a wonderful simile to illustrate how this aggregate of Consciousness might work. When all of these different dimensions of Consciousness get lit up, moment after another, the Sankhara⁴ that we talked about yesterday can begin to create something real for us, like a magical illusion. Except that we don't quite always see it that way. We see it as quite real, and we get hooked by the content of the illusion, the dream-like thing. But when we're in the present moment, we can begin to tease apart and see, "Oh, this is not as substantial or as real as I had thought."

There is a very famous line in the Chinese sutra called The Diamond Sutra⁵ that says something like: "All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, like dew or a flash of lightning." This is pointing to a similar aspect of our conditioned experience. I remember many years ago I went to an outlet on Thanksgiving Day, the shopping day. When I got to the parking lot and got out of the car, there were so many people, and the stores were dazzling with lights and sounds and very strong smells and fragrance. It was just very loaded up. For a few moments, I remember standing there, and I felt so disoriented. It was really this kind of elusive feeling, and I thought to myself, "Is this really real? What's really real?" So I ended up getting one thing from a store and immediately left. I can't remember doing Thanksgiving shopping after that again.

So this is the elusive nature of this aggregate. The Buddha seems to have a real kind of insight and immediate experience of how this works. This magic illusion has two aspects that I felt were being pointed out. One is that one can see through the magic illusions and become disenchanted and not so interested in it. And yet, magic shows being magic shows, they also have this alluring quality to them, so people get hooked by them. The illusions get real. And so that's the force, the Sankhara, that can come in and pull us into it. Sometimes we end up, maybe a lot of times when we're not paying attention to what's happening, living in the movies that we're constructing for ourselves.

Through this practice, what can happen is that the Buddha also knows when we begin to see through and unpack, tease apart, seeing the as-is nature of this kind of humanly phenomenon, there is a natural arising or natural emergence of disinterest in them. So you can say, "Oh, this is just how it is. How much more can I watch this? Can I get hooked by the magic show?" After you watch it for a while, there is a natural disinterest in it. This is later on what the sutta begins to point out: that one naturally gets disenchanted and dispassionate, and eventually that alluring effect, that attachment that is there, begins to soften and loosen and maybe get released momentarily.

You may all have had experiences like this. What becomes available to us is this deeper kind of peace and well-being that's there that is not based on being stimulated by all of our sense consciousness or sense contact. They can still be functioning; those are the functional capacities of human beings. But the clinging to them, the attachment to them, and the ongoing kind of construction based on the illusions begin to soften, begin to loosen up. That's the power of practicing with the immediacy of our experience.

I'd like to read the last verses of the sutta, maybe as a way to inspire or cheer us up through the practice. This is what the Buddha said at the final verses: "A practitioner with energy aroused should look upon the aggregates thus..." and that is, he used the words void, hollow, insubstantial, "...and just as they are, whether by day or at night. Comprehending, ever mindful, they should discard all the fetters and clinging attachments and take a refuge for themselves. Let them fare as with a head ablaze, yearning for the imperishable state."

I don't know quite how we relate to the last words; it feels pretty dramatic. But maybe I will soften this by inviting us to practice with care and respect for being human, for the humanly processes, and really allow ourselves to soak in the immediacy of our experience and let that inform us, let it guide us in this way.

May this week's practice and Dharma reflections benefit ourselves and benefit all beings everywhere. Thank you, friends. Have a wonderful rest of the day.