All quotes from
Thich's book
Perceiver,
perceived, and thing-in-itself are together called “the self-revealing aspects”
and they depend on each other.
In Buddhism, there are no external enemies – there is only
ourselves.
We compare, struggle, and wonder how to let go of our personal,
subjective view and arrive at an objective recognition of things. We want to be directly in touch with the
reality of the world. Yet the objective
reality we think exists independently of our sense perceptions is itself and
creation of collective consciousness.
The
perfuming of our consciousness affects our patterns of seeing, feeling, and
behaving. The seeds of our consciousness
manifest not only in a psychological form but also as the objects of our
perception – mountains, rivers, other people.
Because of habit energies, we are not able to perceive things as they
truly are. We interpret everything we
see or hear in terms of our habit energy…. When we meet a person, what we
really meet is our own habit energy, and it prevents us from seeing anything
else…. Our habit energies keep us from being able to perceive the reality of
the present moment.
Realize that looking after ourselves is also
looking after our loved ones.
Our
negative habits always push us to do and say things that bring suffering to
ourselves and others.
All the
objects of sensation we perceive are transformed into representations,
conditioned by the seeds of delusion in our store consciousness. This is why we must train the mind
consciousness to look deeply and perceive deeply.
When our seeds of thinking, comparing, and judging manifest as
mental formations in our mind consciousness, the image that results is not the
true nature of the perceived object.
Because our perception is “stained” by our emotions, memories, views,
and knowledge, we cannot touch the true nature of what we observe.
Consciousness
is always consciousness of something.
Thinking is always thinking of something. Anger is always being angry at
someone or something. There cannot be
object without subject or subject without object.
Self and
other, inside and outside, are concepts.
Concepts are produced by our consciousness.
You and I
are one, and we are also not two. One is
an idea; two is also an idea. Neither
idea accords exactly with reality.
The way
we perceive reality has everything to do with our happiness and suffering.
We
already existed before our birth, although in a different form. Clouds are the past life of rain. Rain is a continuation of the clouds. When energy becomes matter, that is just a
continuation.
Our consciousness rarely touches reality.
The sense organs – the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind – are
also called gates because all that we perceive enters through them.
When we
burn a piece of paper, the paper does not cease to exist; it becomes heat,
ashes, and smoke.
We have to learn how to touch reality without using our usual
patterns of thinking.
The objects of mind are thinking, imagination, and ideas. The result is mind consciousness.
Our habit energies, delusions, and craving come together and create
a tremendous source of energy that conditions our actions, speech, and
thinking. This energy is called manas.
Our body
is a manifestation of our store of consciousness.
We build
a world full of illusion for ourselves because of the distorted way we perceive
reality.
[The] function of manas is an
instinctual defense mechanism that does not operate on wisdom. But by always trying to defend the self, it
can end up destroying the self.
Meditation is to
look deeply in order to arrive at reality – first the reality of ourselves and
then the reality of the world. To get to
the reality, we have to let go of the images we create in our consciousness and
our notions of self and other, inside and outside.
Mental formations that are based in seeing ourselves as separate –
all arise from manas.
In our ordinary discriminatory world, we see a teapot as a single,
independent object. But if we look
deeply enough into the teapot, we will see that it contains many phenomena
–earth, water, fire, air, space, and time – and we will realize that in fact
the entire universe has come together to make this teapot. That is the interdependent nature of the
teapot.
Our
society, country, and the whole universe are also manifestations of seeds in
our collective consciousness.
Consciousness
records and is impregnated wall of experience and perceptions that come to us
through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
We
continue to believe that consciousness is one thing, and that there is an outer
“objective” reality, apart from consciousness, upon which the image of
[reality] is formed.
