REVIEW OF SESSIONS 1 - 8
Session One - Seven locations for the mind, which are refuted by the Buddha.
Session Two - The conditional mind is like ‘transient dust’ which moves, whereas the bright, original Mind is like a ‘host’ who has nowhere to go.
Session Three - The Buddha explains ‘true seeing’ which does not age or die. “Sentient beings are confused about things, being turned around by external objects they lose their original Mind. If they are able to turn objects around, they will be the same as the Thus Come One.”
Session Four - The True Mind neither arises nor ceases and is therefore beyond ‘is’ and ‘is not’. “When one sees seeing, one sees what is not seeing. Seeing free of seeing, seeing cannot reach.”
Session Five - The Five Aggregates, Six Senses, Twelve Bases, Eighteen Realms are the profound nature of True Suchness (bhūtatathatā) of the Womb of Thus Come Ones (Tathāgatagarbha), and the Seven Elements are completely interfused with one another (圓融) and extend throughout the Dharmadhātu.
Session Six - How the Seven Elements are completely interfused with one another (圓融) and extend throughout the Dharmadhātu. The Buddha explains ‘three continuities’: the world, sentient beings, and karma.
Session Seven - Rāhula rings a bell and the Buddha explains the nature of ‘true hearing’ which does not depend upon sound and silence.
Session Eight - The senses are like six knots that must be untied from their center and cannot be untied all at once. The Buddha then asks the arhats and bodhisattvas how they came to all-pervasive (’pariniṣpanna’) awareness.
The Seven Elements
- Ucchuṣma = turning the fire of sensual desire into the fire of wisdom
- Dharaṇiṃdhara = leveling the mind-ground and seeing the equality of the earth element
- Moonlight Youth = removing the ‘tile’ of view of a body from infinite water element
- Crystal Light = the ‘wind’ of illusory concurrent causes
- Ākāśagarbha = the great mirror-like mind
- Maitreya = observing all as consciousness-only
- Mahāsthāmaprāpta = mindfulness of the buddha Amitabha
Avalokiteśvara’s Reply
The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara explains learning the process of reversing the hearing faculty from a buddha named Avalokiteśvara. The bodhisattva then develops the ‘hearing the sounds of the world’ which is the meaning of Avalokiteśvara. The bodhisattva explains:
- The thirty-two bodily forms used to appear before different types of beings
- The fourteen kinds of fearlessness they bestow on suffering sentient beings
- Four effortless subtle virtues