The Great Secret of Mind

The question, “Is everything rooted in mind?” has been addressed at length in
earlier sections. Here I will discuss this in brief. All happiness and suffering arise
from mind. Different beings perceive external appearances according to their own
envisionment—water can be seen as a drink or a place of residence and so on.
The ground of being is the luminous mind, but a buddha’s pure envisionment
and the impure envisionment of ordinary beings are determined differently by
karma. Everything emerges from the power of the mind as magical illusion. To
that some people may respond, “Well, how can so much variety arise out of a
single base?” The answer is that it is like the way that all trees, vegetation,
minerals, and precious stones appear out of the one earth beneath our feet.
Further, modern scientists believe that all things in the world are composed of
atomic particles; surely all of samsara and nirvana are composed of luminous
mind in a similar way. An even closer parallel is the variety of images of
individual’s faces that can appear on the single surface of a mirror. In a real sense,
the nature of external phenomena and mind is one: the nature of mind is nowhere
to be seen in any direction, nor is it limited to any one place or any particular
conceptual imposition.
If we investigate this external world, we find neither unity nor multiplicity. If it
is a unity, it is not a plurality; if it is a plurality, it is not a unity. Since it is not one
or the other, it remains in emptiness. This emptiness is not like a sky-flower or the
son of a barren woman because external objects are undeniably visible. They are
seen just like the reflection of the moon in water: it is visible, but when we come
to look for it in the container, no moon can be found. If we do not investigate
conventional appearances, they seem to exist; but with investigation, since neither
the external object nor the internal mind can be found to have any substantial
existence whatsoever, we can say that neither has any existence.
If mind and external objects have no substantial existence, some people might
wonder how suffering can arise from them. What is the use of meditation if
nothing has any inherent existence? Quite so. Ignorant of this absence of any
substantial existence in either external phenomena or in beings residing in the
world, we conceive of a substantial “I” or ego and the notion of others “out there”;
attachment and aversion then arise from perceived good and bad. This starts us
down the long river of suffering. When we understand perfectly that there is
nothing substantial anywhere, suffering will cease to arise. Consider a dream in
which we are being eaten by a ferocious tiger or are falling over a steep precipice.
If we knew at the time of suffering that we were dreaming, then, certain of being
deceived, we would automatically find release from our terror.
Dream fantasies are sometimes happy—they are not always sad. Not only in
dreams but also in movies—which we know to have been made by professionals—
the audience still cries during sad scenes and laughs at comic ones. Why do we
laugh and cry even though we know that the movie is a fiction? The happiness
and sadness ensues from attachment to appearances; if we have a strong
conviction of appearances as insubstantial, no such feelings will arise. If we are
unable to detach our minds from the movie as we watch it, how then under duress
from an aggregation of past imprints can we detach our minds in real life? From