Without awakening, it is truly unbearable. Everything binds us; every sensation binds us too. Cognition is a method; it works through changing your cognition. At the very beginning, you think that when ignorance moves, the universe explodes; when ignorance moves, you then emerge and generate the myriad phenomena. At the very beginning, it is a kind of cognition; only when cognition moves does it emerge.
Whether it is scattered thoughts or purity, once you cognize it, that is clinging to appearances. You recognize that you are in scattered thoughts and begin trying to break through them. But at first, because you have instinctive sensations, you cannot see this clearly. You only say: “Teacher, I recognize it; I do not cling to the appearance of these scattered thoughts; I am pure, and I do not cling to the appearance of purity either.”
But this is cognition at the conceptual level, cognition in which body, speech, and mind have not become one. In ordinary life, your thoughts have not yet reached body, speech, and mind; the energy channels and energy in your body have not correspondingly arrived either. That is, when body, speech, and mind have not become one, this cognition has no power. You remain lost, and the sensation is still there.
Sensation pulls you more strongly than concepts do. When you are in pain, that concept is useless; it cannot pull you, because the concept’s power is not great enough, and the power of that cognition is not great enough either. You know perfectly well that this is good, but you still run over there to play. That is only cognition, but once your habitual tendencies arise, the habitual tendencies and desires in your body have greater force and pull you away.
(Teacher, when can I become a Cognition of body, speech, and mind?)
You cannot become a Cognition of body, speech, and mind, because that is what you already are. Never hold the thought of “changing.” Just practice and sit in meditation every day; you already are that. But conceptually, you can never become it. At the beginning, that is actually how it is; it is simply your state—I can only put it that way.
But when you practice, never say, “I want to become body, speech, and mind.” You must know that you are already one in body, speech, and mind. In the end, body, speech, and mind are all illusory. Form and emptiness are not two in you, so how could they fail to be one? If you have a body, speech, and mind, they cannot become one.
When you enter a state of self-forgetting and no-self, body, speech, and mind no longer exist; only then can you become one. As soon as you have them, there are three appearances there: an appearance of consciousness and an appearance of the body. The body is an appearance that truly exists—not the you that truly exists, understand? So you cannot become one. You cling to these three appearances; how could these three become one? You are very attached to these three appearances.
Our self is made up of all kinds of appearances—many, many appearances, across lifetime after lifetime. This is a deeply rooted cognition and concept. So in the end we have to struggle, for a long time, before we can be liberated from these appearances. This is a contradiction we construct for ourselves: a mass of appearances, trapping ourselves inside them.
All of samsara is appearances; those appearances keep playing themselves out here. They keep steering our cognition; they keep steering our cognition. There is a cognition that can see things across lifetimes; it is steered and pulled by these appearances spanning lifetimes, unable to be its own master.
That cognition of yours is not pulled along; it is pulled by the Buddha’s teachings. The Buddha tells you what things are and how you should cognize them. You sit there slowly, aware yet unmoving. You cognize; this cognition can return to the source.
After you cognize something, because of sensation, you make choices. For example, I am sitting here. Then, not clinging to appearances, I sit in meditation. But suddenly I see you, and I say: “You are sitting over here, and she is sitting over there.” Looking at this, I suddenly have a thought: “Your clothes today are prettier than hers.” If I have that thought, that is a kind of cognition, and then I start choosing; as soon as I cognize, I choose. With this choice, I immediately become attached to this thing of yours in my mind.
If I like it more, if I want it, and so on, everything comes with it. Or I see that you are prettier than her, say that you are pretty, and look two more times. Then your appearance is there; perhaps I spend more time with you, and before long I am gradually captivated by you, and so on, and run off after you. This is a series of clinging to appearances; it returns to the whirl of the mundane world, to clinging to appearances.
When you cognize something, if you see it at first glance, cognition is just cognition; good is good, but it has nothing to do with you. Then you come back. Cognition followed by a series of choices—that is the trouble. This is also called clinging: you want this, not that; I want you, not her, because your eyes have a little more depth than hers—this kind of choosing.
For some things, this kind of cognition comes from something sudden… because everyone really does have their own tastes: some people are drawn to greens, some to radishes; that is all there is to it, nothing more. Actually, there is no fixed rule in this world: when some people choose, they choose the less good one; or they say, “I like that patch where foxtail grass grows. I like foxtail grass; looking at peonies every day is tiring.”
People’s choices sometimes change with their habitual tendencies; they have no fixed appearance. In two days, they may have grown tired even of foxtail grass. They keep changing, because habitual tendencies are changeable. Their habits and habitual tendencies are always changing, and they cannot get a handle on themselves; that is very hard. These choices make them waver constantly, and that is very hard. But Asen seems fine too—not suffering, it seems, just following you all the time, not suffering. I am only giving an example; it has nothing to do with you. Just kidding.
We suffer from being put through this: tossed about and unsettled, unable to find a refuge; we get annoyed ourselves. “Do I really like peonies or foxtail grass?” We cannot figure it out either. This kind of struggle leaves us without a sense of belonging, forever unable to find a place where our hearts can settle.
His heart keeps leaping, keeps swaying; no refuge, no place to settle. In this vast world, in this sea of people, he cannot find a place to set foot. And in the great trichiliocosm, there is nowhere for him to settle. This is how it is: his heart keeps wavering, and he feels miserable; nothing external can help him.
His heart is unsettled because of his choices, habitual tendencies, and making distinctions, so he must begin by cultivating samadhi, gradually settling down—steady, steady, steady. That is how he practices. Only then can he slowly… First, begin by cultivating stability; then settle, after remaining settled for some time, and only then return to the mundane world to discuss these things of Form and emptiness not being two.
If he cannot steady himself in samadhi, then talking about these things is useless. He is already swaying, and you speak of Form and emptiness—he swings from emptiness back to Form. He says, “I seem to have awakened; I understand Form, and I understand emptiness.” He keeps turning back and forth between Form and emptiness.
He always seems unconcerned, as though Form and emptiness were not two for him. But that is not it; he is not settled. He seems to say it does not matter, but that is still not true emptiness. He is merely unconcerned; he has not let go of his self. He has not let go of his self; this kind of emptiness is not true emptiness.
Some things seem to be of no concern, but the self is still there. He feels as though the self has disappeared: “I myself do not mind either.” But he still has not… has not passed through this… You can see that he has not entered the appearance of emptiness, nor truly entered true reality.
(Teacher, when I wholeheartedly settle on one thing in daily life—reading, or simply relaxing now—that is still different from cultivating samadhi on the meditation cushion, right?…)
On the meditation cushion, sometimes he reaches a state of samadhi. After sitting for a certain amount of time and settling down, the brain becomes utterly still; the breath is almost there and almost not there, and even the body’s breathing follows suit. Thoughts grow fewer and fewer, the breath grows weaker and weaker, and one enters a state where it becomes easy to forget self and body.
But when you are reading, even if you have an insight, it is only an insight at the level of consciousness. Physiologically, you cannot realize it at the same time—you cannot realize it—because there are still physiological responses. But there are also some people who practice and realize it as they read; there are people like this, but they are relatively few. That is, as they read and practice, their energy channels turn along physiologically; there are people like this—one sentence and they turn.
But most people need to set aside some additional time to realize it. When we encounter a theory in a book, we suddenly awaken to it, suddenly feel enlightened, and think, “This is really so well put.” I suddenly find that it accords with my nature of mind. But physiologically, because there are still scattered thoughts and your strength is insufficient, you still need to realize it on the meditation cushion and cultivate some depth of practice.
Note: This text was prepared from a teaching video by Yang Ning. If it differs from the video, the video takes precedence. Watch the video.